Rescue Us from Ourselves, O Adonai!

Monday of the Third Week of Advent
December 18, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121823.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with our beautiful O Antiphon:

In our prayer, we call out to God as a Leader, a Leader we desperately crave because we cannot find the way ourselves. Oh, how badly we need that Divine Leader today!

Throughout these past few weeks, as I have prayed and written about the salvation history of Israel, interwoven with our Christian faith, I have been so painfully aware of the current situation in the Holy Land. The human carnage being executed there, as well as in Ukraine, screams against our mounting stagnation and indifference.

As the world observes and opines over the sacrilegious slaughter of human life, I know God’s heart breaks, as does the heart of anyone who loves as God loves. Where are the human leaders who will hear God’s cries to fashion a peace for these people, and for the world which is sickened by their suffering.

“We, people of God who proclaim the Gospel of the Risen One, have the duty to cry out this truth of faith: God is a God of peace, love, and hope. A God who wants us all to be brothers and sisters, as His Son Jesus Christ taught us. The horrors of war, of every war, offend the most holy name of God. And they offend Him even more if His name is abused to justify such unspeakable carnage.”
Pope Francis

War, and its reflection in proliferating smaller violences, is the extreme expression of a heart and a civilization deadened by sin. When a culture has normalized the tactics of death, it can be rescued only by the Divine.

As we pray today with Jeremiah’s promise to a beleaguered people, let us pray for mercy and justice for all people, especially women, children, and the poor who are always the most brutalized in war. And let’s do all that we can to move our government to moral leadership against the embedded sin of global violence.

Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David;
As king he shall reign and govern wisely,
he shall do what is just and right in the land.
In his days Judah shall be saved,
Israel shall dwell in security.
This is the name they give him:
“The LORD our justice.”
Jeremiah 3:5-6

Prayer: On Peace and War – Walter Brueggemann from Prayers for a Privileged People

We are aware, acutely aware in your presence,
of the grind of tanks,
of the blast of mines hidden against human flesh,
of the rat-tat-tat of sniper fire.
We are aware of the stench of death,
bodies of our own military women and men, bodies of countless Iraqis,
and the smell makes us shiver.

Such smells and sounds are remote from us,
but not remote from us are bewilderment,
and anxiety, and double-mindedness.
We are bewildered,
whether we are liberators or invaders,
whether they are terrorists or freedom fighters, whether we should yearn for peace or savor victory.

The world has become so strange,
and our place in it so tenuous,
where gray seems clearer than the white purity of our hopes,
or the darkness of our deathly passions.
There is so little agreement among us,
perhaps so little truth among us,
so little, good Lord, that we scarcely know how to pray,
or for what to pray.

We do know, however, to whom we pray!
We pray to you, creator God, who wills the world good;
We pray to you, redeemer God, who makes all things new.
We pray to you, stirring Spirit, healer of the nations.
We pray for guidance,
And before that, we pray in repentance,
for too much wanting the world on our own terms.

We pray for your powerful mercy,
to put the world – and us – in a new way,
a way after Jesus who gave himself,
a way after Jesus who confounded the authorities and
who lived more excellently.
Whelm us by your newness, by peace on your terms
– the newness you have promised,
of which we have seen glimpses in your Son
who is our Lord.