Word to the Wise
Saturday, June 28, 2014 - Saturday in the 12th Week in Ordinary Time
[Lam 2:2, 10-14, 18-19 and Matt 8:5-17]The Lord has consumed without pity all the dwellings of Jacob; He has torn down in his anger the fortresses of daughter Judah.....
Day after day we are seeing on our screens terrible scenes of human suffering in the conflict in Syria and also in various places in Africa! The humanitarian crises are almost beyond belief but we can see them with our own eyes. The Lamentations of Jeremiah over Jerusalem are not an exaggerated proclamation of grief. The faces on the screen are numb amidst the ruins of villages and towns that have been destroyed for the sake of armed battle! My Dominican brothers and sisters in Mosul, Iraq have had to leave everything and flee to safety after staying even beyond what most people would have done!
Very few of us here can go there to help. We can contribute to Catholic Relief Services or some other international agency like the Red Cross to do our bit to alleviate the physical suffering. It is the terrible psychological and spiritual loss that can pull from us prayers like that of Jeremiah in the Lamentations or many of the psalms. "How long, O Lord....?" Yes, we must pray that somehow peace can return to the tortured Middle East and to places like Chad, Somalia, Central Africa, the Congo..... Last but not least, can there ever be peace in the place over which Jeremiah and Jesus wept: Jerusalem? Again our prayers are tested and pulled from us over and over again. AMEN