Posts
A Letter to Governor HIckenlooper
Pope Francis and the Pathway to Easter
In the meantime, here is a report from a seminarian in Rome.
Prayer on the Eve of an Infamous Decision
On this day, we pray and fast but not without hope: Christian prayer offered with love and confidence has the power to overcome every form of violence and brutality. This is because this kind of prayer, the prayer that flows from a broken heart, has the power to gain bold access to the Lord. The Lord would not declare that those who sorrow are blessed unless He had committed Himself to comforting them by manifesting the transforming power of His mercy.
America needs Christians who care enough to pray with the blessed sorrow that alone brings Christ’s healing comfort. When the Supreme Court trampled the inalienable right to life, it burdened American life with the weight of violent uncertainties. In a society where even the womb is exposed to the most heartless brutality and egregious atrocities, what hope is there that such a people will ever be able to grow together in authentic social concern or friendship? And if any instrument of government believes itself invested with the authority to subjugate the sacred rights of the most vulnerable, how can the governed really have confidence in any kind of rule of law other than that which the politically and culturally powerful use to marginalize those whose rights are deemed inconvenient for the progress of society? Not satisfactorily resolved, these perilous questions sink the whole American experiment into a pigpen of disingenuous political and cultural gamesmanship.
We must prayerfully grieve for our nation, for our communities, for our families. American greatness is grounded in the humility that the light of faith reveals to those who seek God. Only the faith of those who believe can help our society rethink again the gift of life under the rays of a kindly light. Christian prayer magnifies this light under whose faintest glimmer true life, humility and greatness are together born. But it can only do so with heartfelt tears (whether physical or not): God hears the contrite soul that pours itself out in humble need — and for Christians offering such intercession is our greatest social responsibility.
If we would open our hearts to the the sorrow with which God aches we too would ache for the millions of babies, and children, and young people, and whole families which He willed to entrust to our care, but who are not here because of what we have willed. We must weep over our own blind self-deception in believing that any decision regarding life is private affair. We are all implicated in one another’s decisions irrespective of whether we are male or female, friends or enemies, atheists or believers. The decision not to welcome or protect life is always a social reality, the most inhumane form of social poverty that can inflict any family or community — and God’s heart can only weep over us for having fallen into such misery.
By prayer and fasting there is still the opportunity that we might be pierced to the heart. It is still possible for us to know compunction over the fact that instead of protecting motherhood and supporting those whose desperate situations drove them to despair, we viewed their plight as an inconvenience that needed to be dispatched as efficiently as possible. Sorrow can still drive us to the hope of prayer and by this hope to a new beginning.
If heaven is dismayed that we who have been blessed far beyond anything we ever deserved chose to be callous towards those who most needed our help, our encouragement, our love — we still may yet be astonished by the mercy of God in which even the evil of our personal decisions finds its limit. In prayer, the tears of faith access the power of God who in unimaginable mercy is waiting to heal the alienation and coldness of heart our own actions have brought on ourselves. In such holy conversation with the One who knows the deepest truth of our hearts, baptized in holy tears of repentance and gratitude, the grace of a change of heart yearns to unfold and new possibilities that we cannot imagine await us.
A Culture of Life and Family Prayer
This is not to say that society has not been progressing without prayer — but society without God only progresses through various circles of hell. A loveless civilization has been progressing out of control for quite sometime, and in the process corrupting all that is holy and true about the American way of life. Here, Obama Care and the HHS mandate to implement it are simply signs of another stage in the same evolutionary process that brought us Roe vs Wade. Absolute power over life and death is a divine right, and our government has no fear of God in usurping this role. A litany of court orders, executive orders, laws and regulations appeal to safety and security with emotive force and righteous indignation. Each new invocation advances another lifeless and loveless cause, causes which if carefully marketed provide another pretext for the powerful to protect themselves from the dreams and aspirations of what they can only see as an unholy mob.
Prayer allows individuals to bind together as a people in freedom, prayerlessness allows a mob to bind the individual against his will. The particular form of social progress we are currently enjoying in America goes hand in hand with the ever increasing cultural hostility to prayer we have accepted as a norm. The more a society progresses down to a prayerless mob, the easier it becomes to manipulate. Wihout prayer, the promptings of conscience which normally protect communities from implicating themselves in grave social evil are silenced. This seems to be at work in our culture as we have moved away from prayer and pre-occupied ourselves with all kinds of political rancor and envy, news cycles and narratives. Although abortion is not as popular as it once was, those we have invested with political or cultural power (for the lastest example, check out the efforts of the Governor of New York) are as adamant as ever about compelling the whole of society to participate in this evil, no matter the dictates of individual consciences. In fact, compelling whole religious organizations to provide immoral services is now heralded as the next stage of social progress.
The less we pray, the more vulnerable we are to evil, and the weaker our witness to the greatness of our religion. Like the criminals convicted at Nuremberg trials, people of faith are expected to act against what they know is right because the authorities have ordered them to do so. When individual members of a society feel compelled to act against what they believe is noble and true, is it any wonder why that whole society should be burdened with every form of unhappiness and misery? To live in such self-contradiction is to be damned. No amount of convenience or luxury or diversion can address the weight of unacknolwedged guilt that haunts such a people or overcome the burning alienation from one another abusing and being abused by power causes. If people of faith forsake prayer in the face of such evil, how can they offer a reason for their hope when such a word of hope is most needed?
For lack of prayer, the gift of freedom has become at risk in America. A government, even if democratic, always progresses toward unholy forms of tyranny whenever it violates such basic goods as religious freedom, the institution of marriage, the rights of children to maternal and paternal love, and the right to life. How can a society stand if it will not welcome and nurture the gift of life, if it will not reverence the holiness of marriage, if it will not allow people to follow their moral consciences? And what kind of wealth does such a people possess if anxiety over it makes them afraid to take care of the most vulnerable and beautiful gifts God bestows? As Mother Theresa once explained, it is a great poverty to think that a baby must die so that one might live as they wish. Yet a callous poverty is progressively robbing America of the noble destiny God has invited us to share.
Although many Americans have forgotten God, God has not forgotten America. The noble calling He invites America to accept involves our becoming an even brighter beacon of human freedom than we have ever been before — and this is possible even now under the current oppressiveness of our government. Advancing a genuine freedom rooted in the truth demands that we not fear to seek and protect the dignity of the human person — from womb to tomb. This dignity can only be rightly seen and fully protected by prayer.
Prayer makes space for love. This is true in the heart of each believer. This is true in marriages. This is true in families. This is true in communities. Love, in the form of social friendship, is the only foundation on which civility can be maintained. Real social friendship is not something innate or apriori in human nature. It is something learned — in fact it is the hardest thing to learn, because one cannot learn it except at the expense of his own life. This is exactly why God sent his Son into the World – to show us how to love one another and God, and to give us His own power so that we might begin to relate to God and to one another in ways not subject to death. Because family prayer (and the family rosary in particular) dispose parents and children to that unfathomable Divine Love Christ makes present in both our social and personal histories, the daily prayer of families together offers a remedy that may help America progress towards that culture of life and civilization of love God has called us to be in the world.