Can you recommend an Easter dinner prayer?

[Sharon_McGinley]

Can anyone recommend an Easter dinner prayer suitable for young children and non-Catholics?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

If you are hosting the dinner, use whatever prayer you like. If you don’t “dumb down” the prayer, children should be impressed with the solemnity of the occasion. Non-Catholics should appreciate the fact that they are guests in a Catholic home on the holiest day of the Catholic liturgical calendar and be willing to listen respectfully to whatever Catholic prayer you think appropriate for the occasion. Here is one possibility for a meal blessing for Easter (and those who don’t wish to join in the responses are free to sit quietly):

BEFORE THE MEAL

Leader: This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad, let us praise the Lord for his goodness. For behold, Jesus died and now lives for evermore. Alleluia!

ALL: He has gone before us. Yet he is with us for all time. Alleluia!

Leader: Lord, on this most holy day let your blessing rest upon us and upon our table. Strengthen us in this time together. We ask this in Jesus’ name.

ALL: Amen.

AFTER THE MEAL

Leader: Blest are you, Lord our God, who gathers us together in Jesus’ name. We thank you for sharing your life with us, both in this meal and in all the ways you sustain us, through Christ, our Risen Lord.

ALL: Amen.

Prayer Source: Prayers at Meals by Michael Kwatera, O.S.B. and Dietrich Reinhart, O.S.B., The Liturgical Press (source).