PRAYER SERVICE for GANDHI JAYANTI

2nd October 2010

THEME: “Love conquers all”

PREPARATION:

- Bajan
- Poster with the theme: LOVE CONQUERS ALL
- News Paper cutting, with incidents of violence, rape, robbery etc.
- A group of students to be prepared.

1. BHAJAN: Play a Bajan to get the students to be in a prayerful mood.

(Pause....)

2. INTRODUCTION
Prayer Leader: Gandhi, the Asian messiah whose birth anniversary we celebrate today has been a
man of prayer and vision, a man of God’s choice to liberate people from the slavery of the evils and
greed of men... He was very religious in his outlook and he believed that in the other world nobody
could wear labels as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Zorastrians. Men and women will be judged by
actions alone and not by the religion they profess.... We pause here and receive the message that is in
this little reflection…. It’s a call to pray for unity.... for peace.... for love.

3. CHOIR:
Bind us together Lord (2)
Bind us together with cords that
cannot be broken
Bind us together Lord (2)
Bind us together in Love.

4. COMMENTARIES
Student 1: If we only have a leader, if we only had a prophet among us to point our misdeeds and
show with divine authority a direction of hope. We would find peace and justice - the world needs your
presence Lord, your presence through people who like Gandhiji may act with the power of love to lift
up the misery and the crisis we are going through in our country.... We thank you for Mahatma Gandhi
who always believed in the power of love....

Student 2: Gandhi’s faith in the efficacy of love is unshakable. In his book Satyagraha he says “There
is none so fallen in this world who cannot be converted by love.”

Prayer Leader: Let us listen to the words of a song from the Gitanjali:

Student 3
Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads!
Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner
of a temple with doors all shut?
Open thine eyes and see Thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground

where the path maker is breaking stones, he is with them in
sun and in shower and his garments are covered with dust....
Meet Him and stand by Him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.

Prayer Leader: Gandhi was of the firm conviction that faith has to be lived not propagated; that the
power of loving is an active power. We have to work against all the social evils and relieve people of
their pain, misery, hunger and poverty.... relieve people of their selfishness and greed – which is the
cause of all the suffering in our country.

5. HYMN: “The world stands in need of liberation”

6. WORD OF GOD: Gal.5:13-15

7. NEWS BITS
Prayer Leader: Gandhi has called Christ as the ‘prince of Satyagraha’. To Gandhi, Christ was a
person who saw love as the supreme law of life the strongest yet the humblest imaginable force in the
world and it has the power to penetrate barriers.... Let us listen to some news in our country (get some
newspaper clippings with incidents of violence, rape, robbery etc.)

Reader: I…..
II….
III….

Prayer Leader: All this violence hate and injustice is because of a lack of love in the hearts of people
and a lack of deep awareness of God’s presence in their lives.

8. CHOIR: “Make me a channel of your peace”

9. QUOTES FROM GANDHI

Prayer Leader: In silence for a while we recall the struggle Mahatma Gandhi went through. Let us
honour him as we attentively listen to some of his quotes.

Student 1: The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly and act rightly.

Student 2: I do not expect the India of my dream to develop any one religion and be wholly Christian
or wholly Hindu, but I want it to be wholly tolerant with its religions working side by side with one
another.

Student 3: Students must become pioneers, conserving all that is good in the nation and fearlessly
ridding society of the evils that have crept in.

Leader: A multitude of saints have walked this nation. Gandhiji is gratefully and lovingly remembered
as the ‘Father of our Nation! His adherence to the truth made him invincible. We join hands and sing
the Our Father asking God to bless our Leaders our people and our country.

10. FINAL PRAYER SONG: OUR FATHER

Edited from a Prayer Service found in RAYS Magazine Sept.-Oct.1996 No. 2