See, days are coming—oracle of the Lord GOD—when I will send a famine upon the land: Not a hunger for bread, or a thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the LORD. [Amos 8:11]
With
this ongoing pandemic, with more and more variants, there is such a hunger and
thirst within the human family. Many of our brothers and sisters are stressed
with the increase of loss of income and increasing food prices, with isolation,
a type of famine from in person human contact, hungering for relief from
stress, and with a thirst for real hope.
In his
catecheses on prayer Pope Francis urges: We all have something to learn from
the perseverance of the Russian pilgrim, mentioned in a famous work on
spirituality, who learned the art of prayer by repeating the same invocation
over and over again: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Lord, have mercy on us,
sinners!” …... He only repeated this. If his life received graces, if prayer
became so warm one day as to perceive the presence of the Kingdom among us, if
his gaze was transformed until it became like that of a child, it is because he
insisted on reciting a simple Christian exclamation. In the end, it became part
of his breathing. The story of the
Russian pilgrim is beautiful: it is a book that is accessible to all. I
recommend you read it; it will help you to understand what vocal prayer is.
Therefore, we must not disregard vocal prayer….. Please, one must not succumb
to the pride of scorning vocal prayer. It is the prayer of the simple, the one
Jesus taught us: Our Father, who art in heaven…. The words we speak take us by
the hand; at times they restore flavour, they awaken even the sleepiest of
hearts; they reawaken feelings we had forgotten. And they lead us by the hand
towards the experience of God. And above all, they are the only ones that, in a
sure way, address to God the questions that he wants to hear. Jesus did not
leave us in a fog. He told us: “when you pray, say this”. And he taught the
Lord’s Prayer (cf. Mt 6:9). [1]
Pope
Francis is calling not just the Church, East and West, but the whole world to
pray throughout May for an end to the pandemic, with particular emphasis on
prayer through the intercession of Our Blessed Mother who is our refuge,
protectress, perpetual help. [2]
Within
the treasury of the Church, we have prayers and litanies for every situation in
life, the greatest of these being, East and West, the Divine Liturgy/Holy Mass.
The one particular reference Pope Francis makes above is to THE WAY OF THE
PILGRIM: …aware of our weakness and placing all our trust in the Lord, we
should love His commandments more than life and direct all our attention to
acquiring the habit of ceaseless calling on the name of the Lord. [3]
The great
weakness we all human beings must face each day, at times excruciatingly, is
when it comes to things like this pandemic we are powerless. True we can fight
with all available resources and develop vaccines and follow distancing and
other protocols but no single nor massive group of human beings can control
this pandemic.
The
Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of
interpreting them in the light of the Gospel. [4] This duty is not an institutional one of the Church but
a duty for every member of the body of Christ, in order that, guided by the
Holy Spirit, we may all proclaim the Gospel of Christ, the Gospel of Life and
Hope.
Besides
the obvious reading of the signs of the times, for which Pope Francis has
called for a month of prayer that the ‘sign’ of the pandemic end, there are
other signs of the times in which we live that also should be brought to
prayer: all the incidents of civil wars, oppression of peoples, the divisive
arguments in the various print, television, radio, internet media about the
pandemic, vaccines, government abuse of power under the cloak of public health
measures and restrictions, the raw physical, emotional, spiritual stress of
these times.
Only
with the help of the Most Holy Spirit will we have the grace not to fall
into any of the swamps of the cacophony of loud and contradictory voices. No
one should risk in these days of agenda driven media of any type, to trust
as objectively true any contemporary information, nor should we stress
ourselves trying to sort through all the racket and agendas.
It
would be less stressful, less emotionally and spiritually damaging to go find a
massive haystack and search for the proverbial needle, and when taking in any
contemporary information these days to do so while not merely taking a grain of
salt but an entire fistful.
We need
to ask the Most Holy Spirit to renew within us one of His gifts poured into us
at our baptism, which both protects us from being overwhelmed by the tsunamis
of information that keep rolling over the human family and gives us the
strength to endure in these times: the gift of fortitude.
The
Holy Spirit moves us by this gift so that we are able to overcome difficulties,
to avoid dangers, to have confidence. “I can do all things,” exclaimed the
Apostle Paul, “in Him who strengthens me.”……..The Holy Spirit is within us, and
we can receive His efficacious aid whenever it is needed…..His graces and gifts
are found in the sanctuary of our souls, and so we carry the divine world
within us. [5]
[3] The
Way of the Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His way; Helen Bacovcin
translator[author is reputed to be an unknown 19th century peasant]
p.185; Image Books, 1978
[5] THE
SANCTIFIER, by Most Rev. Luis M. Martinez, pps. 137 & 140, 141; St. Paul
Editions, 1982
© 2021
Fr. Arthur Joseph
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