Tag: Ukraine

Lent: Reaching for Peace

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Creation, Faith, justice, Lent, peace, spiritualityLeave a comment

March 28, 2022
Monday of the Fourth week of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we receive a perfect encouragement from Isaiah:

Is65_new heavens

Walter Brueggemann calls Isaiah 65 “a glorious artistic achievement”. Indeed, these images confirm his statement:

  • a new heavens and a new earth;
  • constant rejoicing and happiness
  • people will be a delight
  • no weeping or crying;
  • long life for all
  • everyone with a home
  • enough for all to eat

As we pray with this passage today, we may experience a longing for a return to our beautiful, safe world – a world before pandemic, a world before the specter of WW III. In today’s violent and besieged environment, we all pray from a place of anxiety, loss, constraint, or some degree of suffering. 

Isaiah’s community prayed from the same place. All the beautiful images were a promise not yet realized. The prophetic poetry of Isaiah is a call to courageous hope, not a description of current circumstances.

upside

Faith invites us, even as we experience a bittersweet longing, to trust that God is with us, teaching us and leading us deeper into the Divine Understanding. Even as circumstances turn our world upside down, God will guide the falling pieces to a blessed place if we commit to find God in the tumbling.

I don’t think many of us would deny that the world has needed fixing for a long, long time. The systems we have built leave many in deficit throughout the world, and we have failed to address the wound.

War, pandemic, forced migration of the poor, climate catastrophe all have laid that failure bare.

As we pray for resolutions to these sufferings, may we be opened to an irrevocable awareness of our common humanity and responsibility for one another.

Only by such an outcome will we move closer to Isaiah’s peaceful Kingdom. Only by our courage to embrace it, can God fulfill the Promise in us.

Poetry: by Emily Dickinson

I many times thought Peace had come
When Peace was far away —
As Wrecked Men — deem they sight the Land —
At Centre of the Sea —

And struggle slacker — but to prove
As hopelessly as I —
How many the fictitious Shores —
Before the Harbor lie —

Music: O Day of Peace – Carl P. Daw

Lent: Pray for the Enemy

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Conversion, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Prayer, spirituality4 Comments

March 24, 2022
Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jeremiah begins our readings by describing the evil heart:

… they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed.
They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts
and turned their backs, not their faces, to Me.

Jeremiah :24

It is a terrible thing to encounter a truly evil-hearted person – someone who exudes a twisted energy which is the polar opposite of God’s Love.

I believe we are seeing such a individual now in the person of Vladimir Putin. His actions leave us astounded at their arrogance and cruelty. How can such a person face himself, and certainly, how can he face God?

But our Psalm and Gospel Verse, lead me to ask myself the question:

What if we prayed FOR Vladimir Putin?

Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

What if we took pity on the wretched soul he has become and asked God to heal his mind and give him a new heart? He has become sick with evil, and that is a tragic thing to see in a leader responsible for millions of lives!

All of us feel tremendous sorrow and compassion toward the Ukrainian people. But in the end, no matter what, they will triumph through their sincerity, courage and faithfulness.

Putin, on the other hand, is otherwise lost for all eternity.

Will you consider praying today for Putin and those who share his evil culpabilities that they may yet hear the voice of goodness, justice, peace, and reverence for human life?

As we witness the power of God revealed in our Gospel story, let us ask that the evil of war be driven out of the hearts of all those responsible for the outrageous suffering and inhumanity being perpetrated again the people of Ukraine and in all war-infested parts of our world.

Music: Shchedryk by Mykola Leontovich

One of the world’s most famous Christmas songs – The Carol of the Bells – was based on the Ukrainian song Shchedryk, written in 1916 by composer Mykola Leontovich, which was in turn based on the melody and lyrics of a pre-Christian folk song.

This is Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra and Choir’s dedication to brave Ukrainian people who suffer under the brutal Russian invasion. Our musicians performed this beautiful love song a couple of years ago. Tine Bec did an amazing arrangement. It was composed by Mykola Leontovych: Shchedryk (Carol the Bells) with a splendid arrangement, made by composer Slovenian Tine Bec.

This arrangement is magical. It starts like deep sad mourning and continues to strengthen, unitarian voice, which is stronger than any steel, any armoury and any Russian bullet, rocket or trank grande. Music is a winner. It gives hope, unites us in a way, that no aggression will ever win.

Arrangement: Tine Bec
Piano: Monika Podlogar; Cello: Katarina Minatti

Lent: The Way Home

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, Lent, spiritualityLeave a comment

March 13, 2022
Second Sunday of Lent

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings are about types of citizenship, that condition of knowing we are fully and irrevocably home.

In Genesis, Abraham is given a land for himself and his descendants as a sign of God’s abiding Presence.

“I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans
to give you this land as a possession.”

Genesis 15:5

In Philippians, Paul tells us that, truly, “our citizenship is in heaven”.

But our citizenship is in heaven,
and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Philippians 3:20

In Luke, the transfigured Jesus shows us what that heavenly reality will be like. It is a kind of glorious belonging that Peter wants to hold on to … to capture in a tent.

Jesus took Peter, John, and James
and went up the mountain to pray.
While he was praying his face changed in appearance
and his clothing became dazzling white.

Luke 9:28

But the Creator makes it clear this dwelling and citizenship exists only in the heart of Christ where we are called to listen and live our lives.

While Peter was still speaking,
a cloud came and cast a shadow over them,
and they became frightened when they entered the cloud.
Then from the cloud came a voice that said,
“This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”

Luke 9:34-35

These readings confirm that, in God, we are a people not bound by borders, ethnicities, religious cult, or any other human categorization.

Every human being belongs to God and is called to live in the fullness of that Creation. This is our shared Divine citizenship demanding a reverent mutuality for one another’s lives.

Think about that in contrast to the incomprehensible outrage of Putin’s unprovoked war against the Ukrainian people. Think about it relative to the many armed conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin and South America.

Click to see chart of countries currently experiencing armed conflicts

Think of our Oneness in God compared to talk of border walls, ethnic and religious bans, white supremacy, anti-semitism, islamophobia and all the other manufactured ways we try to isolate people from this Divine citizenship which makes us brothers and sisters in God.

On this Sunday when our readings remind us of where and to whom each of our hearts belongs, let us pray for our world – for those suffering from war and isolation, and for the unfortunate lost souls executing that suffering. In differing ways, each of them, and we, need continuing redemption.

Poetry: The Man He Killed – Thomas Hardy

Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because –
Because he was my for,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That’s clear enough; although

He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,
Off-hand like – just as I –
Was out of work — had sold his traps —
No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.

Music: The Sins of War – Timothy Shortell

No More War… Never Again

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Faith, Mary, peace, Prayer, spirituality5 Comments

February 19, 2022
Saturday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, I pause in my scriptural reflections to ask all of you to join in prayer for peace in Ukraine. As I typed today’s date, it hit me that we can’t just watch the evolution of this crisis on the news, as if it were a movie that isn’t really happening. We have a responsibility to be active peacemakers in our volatile world, and to foster a resolution that honors all human life.

I’ll tell you why Saturday’s date struck my heart so forcibly.

February 19, 1945

I was not even alive yet. I was kicking around inside my Mom and waiting to be born exactly two months later. There was joyful expectation in my family that afternoon, as you can imagine. What they did not expect was that at that very moment, my mother’s nineteen year old brother had bled to death on the shores of Iwo Jima.

When the word finally reached my family, Jimmy had already been buried at sea. The coordinates are noted in the WWII War Logs: 21°N latitude; 111° E longitude. That’s where he is buried, somewhere in the middle of the Philippine Sea. It feels so very lonely when you look at it on a map.

His death, his slaughter, wounded my mother so deeply that it reached into my incipient spirit. I never knew him, but have never forgotten, my Uncle Jim. Some of you will understand how that can be.

No young man or woman should be left alone forever at the bottom of the sea, or in an mountain gorge, or under the flaming sand. No human being should suffer and die because of war, because of the bloated egos and stunted imaginations of undraftable world leaders who pretend it is the means to peace.

It may seem that we can do little to prevent these travesties, but that’s not true. We can vote; we can lobby; we can advocate for international justice and equity that ameliorate the catalysts to war: poverty, hunger, and political and economic domination.

And we can pray.

We have the power through prayer and political action to fuel the demand for peaceful and diplomatic relationships in our world. These powerful interventions can confront our unexamined militarism and transform it.

Pope Francis has said:

“The news coming out of Ukraine is very worrying. I entrust to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, and to the conscience of political leaders, every effort on behalf of peace. Let us pray in silence.”

Mother of Sorrows – Batolome Murillo

But the responsibility belongs to us as well. Will you join me on this Saturday of the Blessed Virgin Mary to ask her powerful intercession in this outrageous situation in Ukraine?

The following prayer was very meaningful to me and you may want to pray with it: