Bring Us Back

It is no secret that we have abused and continue to abuse Mother Earth! No wonder she erupts with tornadoes, hurricanes, big black holes!

We have spent trillions of dollars and victims in WAR. Is it any wonder that thousands of children die each minute across the world from hunger, lack of medicines, and needing to drink filthy water?

We are greedy; we speak threats, lies, hateful insults. No wonder war rages around us; they start within us and when we can no longer contain the inner turmoil, one by one we stir up more antipathies outside us until nuclear threats build up fear, make us run from one another, and live precariously near sickness, mental disorders, guns.

Lord, have mercy on us. Bring us back to You and to one another.

Recently, I read a prayer published by the Franciscan Action Network in their March 27 weekly newsletter for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion. Let us pray it together:

Give us the strength it takes
to listen rather than to judge,
to trust rather than to fear,
to try again and again
to make peace even when peace eludes us.
We ask, O God, for the grace
to be our best selves.
We ask for the vision
to be builders of the human community
rather than its destroyers.
We ask for the humility as a people
to understand the fears and hopes of other peoples.
We ask for the love it takes
to bequeath to the children of the world
more than the failures of our own making…AMEN.

Renée Domeier, OSB

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash