January 15th, 2024 | Martin Luther King Day
Today, we celebrate the life and witness of Martin Luther King, Jr. While in the United States, today is a national holiday, even here in France, we take on Dr. King’s prophetic witness as both challenge and encouragement for us to expand our work to Become Beloved Community here at the Cathedral.
We began our observance last evening with a Jazz Vespers service honoring Dr. King.
We also share this note and reflection from our Convocation’s Racial Justice and Beloved Community Ministry with an invitation to join an online forum to engage in this work together.
Our cathedral’s Beloved Community leaders are Sylvie Botétémé, Barbara Diggs, and Kim Powell, along with our clergy.
Please keep an eye out for upcoming Beloved Community events and do not hesitate to get in touch with any of us to explore and discuss this essential shared work.
A Prayer by Martin Luther King
O God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee for this golden privilege to worship thee, the only true God of the universe. We come to thee today grateful that thou hast kept us through the long night of the past and ushered us into the challenge of the present and the bright hope of the future. We are mindful, O God, that man cannot save himself, for man is not the measure of things and humanity is not God.
Image credit: Marie Bellando Mitjans
Bound by our chains of sin and finiteness, we know we need a savior. We thank thee, O God, for the spiritual nature of man. We are in nature but we live above nature. Help us never to let anyone or any condition pull us so low as to cause us to hate. Give us the strength to love our enemies and do good to those who despitefully use us and persecute us.
We thank thee for thy Church, founded upon the Word, that challenges us to do more than sing and pray, but go out and work as though the very answer to our prayers depended on us and not upon thee. Then, finally, help us to realize that man was created to shine like the stars and live on through all eternity.
Keep us, we pray, in perfect peace, help us to walk together, pray together, sing together, and live together until that day when all of God's children – Black, White, Red, and Yellow – will rejoice in one common band of humanity in the kingdom of our Lord and of our God, we pray. Amen.