Cry for the country

It is important to keep focused on the good that exists and on the good that must be done.

But every once in a while we should pause for a moment – only a moment - and look realistically at what things are not good.

Perversion and promiscuity seem to grow in popular acceptance every day, with little heed paid to the obvious practical, moral, and long term problems that accompany these things.

The Church, founded on rock by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, seems almost always buffeted by divisions, quasi-apostasy, scandal, regulatory oppression, and popular disaffection.

Nations seem governed by politicians and bureaucrats with agendas hidden in nearly all aspects but one: insatiable ambition and lust for power.

Thus we may find great resonance in the words of today’s first reading (Jeremiah 14:17-22) as a great prophet mourns his country:

Let my eyes stream with tears
day and night, without rest,
Over the great destruction
which overwhelms
the virgin daughter of my people,
over her incurable wound.

If I walk out into the field,
look! those slain by the sword;
If I enter the city,
look! those consumed by hunger.

Even the prophet and the priest
forage in a land they know not.

Have you cast Judah off completely?
Is Zion loathsome to you?
Why have you struck us a blow
that cannot be healed?

We wait for peace, to no avail;
for a time of healing, but terror comes instead.

We recognize, O LORD, our wickedness,
the guilt of our fathers;
that we have sinned against you.

For your name’s sake spurn us not...

Pray for our country.

Pray for our world.

Pray for ourselves.

And then take up the crosses God has given us to bear, as individuals and as a Church, and in the midst of a troubled world go forward in the hope and the power and the love and the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.