Tag: children

They Are ALL Our Own

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Love6 Comments

This was a day of blessed, evident love, spiritual pleading and mutual anxiety for my dear family.  God was so good to us in blessing our dear Oliver with a successful open heart surgery. Thank you all for your prayers and generous thoughts.

Reflecting on all of this later in the day, this prayer poem came to me.

I share it for those who might wish to consider it in their own prayer

Oh, how we love our children,
Daughters, sons,
Grans, great-grands and God’s.
They bring us life, renewed,
And joy unparalleled.

They promise us that God
Is still about the work
Of hopeful Creation.

These dear children,
They are a promise,
A hope, a joy, a gift
A treasure that reminds us
Of God’s innocent and
Loving eyes.

How we must reverence them,
Our own, and those far
From our own, because,
Oh, my dear sisters, brothers,
They are all our own.

181228-bixby-border-tease_b4yvg2
Jakelin Caal Maquin and Felipe Gómez Alonzo died in federal custody after they fled to the US from Guatemala.

A Mother’s Prayer

A Prayer for My Son

… the children, for God’s sake

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Mercy, peace, repentance2 Comments

Friday, December 28, 2018

Feast of the Holy Innocents

Click here for readings

Jer 31_15 Ramah

Today, in Mercy, we are lifted to Light by John’s sacred words in our first reading:

Beloved:
This is the message that we have heard from Jesus Christ
and proclaim to you:
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.

Simply hearing it, we long to abide in that whole and healing Light.

But then we read our Gospel, among the saddest accounts in all of Scripture – the slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Their needless deaths come at the hands of a power-crazed and fearful man.  So hungry for his own aggrandizement, he tries to assure it by killing a generation of children.

It sounds impossible, doesn’t it, that anyone could be so hardened by evil? It sounds impossible that good people would execute this order of a mad man! It sounds impossible that human beings could be so blind to the sanctity of another’s life!

Dear friends, we must confront our own blindness. We must look into the eyes of our 21st century children – the border children, the children of Yemen, Syria, … the children of war, violence, drugs and poverty.

We must hear the cry of God, their Mother, and choose legislators and leaders who will honor life; who will shape global policies and relationships recognizing the common life we share in God – who will make true pro-life choices regarding gun control, arms sales, and an economy of endless war.

Our attitudes, our advocacy and our votes will either condemn or exonerate us when that Great Light ultimately reveals our hearts. When a society’s children become the victims of its indefensible corruption, we must say “Enough!”

Music: The Mediaeval Baebes – Coventry Carol

The “Coventry Carol” is an English Christmas Carol dating from the 16th century. The carol was traditionally performed in Coventry, England as part of a mystery play called “The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors”. The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Matthew’s Gospel. The carol itself refers to the massacre of the Holy Innocents in which Herod ordered all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed, and takes the form of a lullaby sung by mothers of the doomed children.(Information from Wikipedia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhCLwwmtKjs&app=desktop