Pray!
When was the last time you heard your Bishop scream that word from the steps of the Cathedral? Never, you say? Same here. Yet, if ever a time existed that these successors of the Twelve need to raise their hands over us and beg for mercy, ask us to beg for mercy from Almighty God, this is it.
Never mind the diocesan consulters, the mayor of the city to see if it is PC. Politically correct has gotten us nowhere, ever, will never get us anywhere. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and the Decalogue began with “I am the Lord your God.” It is time to get back to that basic fact.
We have California, Oregon, Washington states being eaten by the fires of hell, a couple of hurricanes scouring the Gulf coast, surprise snow in the Rockies. And then, the pandemic. I am not saying these are the plagues that Moses called down on Egypt (unless some astute scholar discovers all who have died were first-born children), but I am saying the remedy is the same as in all plagues and punishments: repent and turn away from evil. Trust the science, the experts say? And Who has created this earth and all that is in it?
Not that the mass media would ever seriously quote a Catholic Bishop pleading for prayers for deliverance. How quaint. That doesn’t mean the action should go undone. While the captive in-house Mass audience (as well as the weekly collection) is gone for an episcopal letter read from the pulpit, that doesn’t mean it should not be written. The vast fund-raising capabilities for mailing for the various diocesan annual appeals could easily be turned into a vehicle to send some explosive rhetoric to the faithful reminding them God is God and He demands our attention always and everywhere.
Who cares about Harry and Meghan’s latest foibles or the latest coronavirus news, which will be criticized, revamped, revised and recycled in two weeks? Who cares about election polls when the real vote won’t be known for weeks? Who cares about the NFL – or U.S. House of Representatives – taking a knee? It isn’t to God, so it is a worthless gesture.
I give you here, a quote from Sacred Music magazine, in 1979:
As a pastor, I have often wondered what keeps so many people from truly coming to an experience of God and His love for mankind. What makes Him so remote from their lives, and why is it that they often do not find Him, especially at the times when they need Him most, the moments of suffering, pain, trial, stress and sorrow? Why is it that so few Catholics today know contemplation as a form of prayer? More and more I find that the answer lies in the ugliness which surrounds us and veils God from our lives. The barrage of the secular, the banal, and the ugliness that the mass media spew over the whole country every hour of the day and night pollutes the Christian community, and that smog keeps us from God.
Msgr. Richard Schuler,
Church of St. Agnes, St. Paul, Minnesota
We are truly lost in a smog. We have lost our true north to fear and indolence. Over and over we hear “stay safe” – countless times a day. The only safety is in Christ Jesus and it is about time we acted like it.
“For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
This article, PRAY! is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
https://bellarmineforum.org/pray/
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