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Flowers of Gratitude

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Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 

I Thessalonians %:16-18

I was going through a difficult time when I was nineteen. My best friend had just died a couple of months before and I had no spiritual foundation for dealing with that. Not only that but my family was going through a difficult time as well.  All of this was made more difficult by the fact that I was not any good at processing emotions or dealing with things in helpful ways. I was trying to change that but I was  still learning. I called a mentor of mine crying, not sure what to do about feeling so bad.  She said to go for a walk and think of five things I was grateful for. I didn’t understand but I was a mess so I did as she asked. I don’t remember what I was grateful for in the end. I mostly remember that being grateful for the smallest things and keeping them in mind as I walked lifted the dark heavy cloak I felt like I was wearing by at least a few pounds.

In the many years since that time I have learned that gratitude helps not only in dark times, but even in the midst of the very darkest of times. Not only that but it seems to fix a lot of problems. It may be that gratitude helps us to accept what is. Or perhaps the slight change in perspective helps us see with more clarity and makes problems appear smaller than they did when we were freaking out, and solutions seem possible. It is a great help in relationships. Appreciating people is an important glue holding us close to one another. It’s the same with God. When Jesus healed a group of ten lepers, he was shocked that only one came back to thank him (Luke 17:11-19). He appreciates our thanks. Gratitude draws us closer to the Giver. 

I haven’t forgotten the bad things that have happened to me in life, at least not the big ones. But I have made a habit of gratitude to the point that, as I recently noticed, when I wake up I usually smile at God as soon as I am conscious. (How long has this been going on?) Generally I’m not elated much. However I am content overall and I have a lot of joy in my life. Sometimes I am really worried about something and sometimes I have anxiety or I get angry or depressed. However the smile is real and at the same time habitual. I am not sure anymore which came first.

I know that when I am feeling out of sorts, uneasy or upset, that one of the best tools in my tool box is to say, “OK what am I grateful for?” Sometimes the things I am grateful for are only things like “Well I’m grateful it’s not worse,” or “I’m grateful for the trees,” or “At least we’re not dead.” Sometimes I laugh at myself that those things are all I can think of. But they are still good things as well as real things. It’s a start. 

Fr. Brian Eilers, when I had just confessed having lost my temper with my family, said he wanted me to go out into the main church and take up my rosary. “On each bead thank God for something. Keep going until you have been all the way around the rosary.” I had been upset when I had driven to the church. But by the time I finished my penance I was smiling. I had even thanked God for my family. I’m so pleased to have them, mad or not! 

So if you’re upset or in a bad mood today, if you got bad news, or if you watched the news and lost your peace, go for a walk. While you are walking, think of five things you are grateful for. Tell God about these.  When you get back, write them down. I’ve advised this to friends having a hard time before. I usually get a good report about how it went. This also helps if you’re angry with someone you love. Think of five things you are grateful for about them. I promise it helps. It can also help when you’re mad at God which at one time or another all of us has been. And when we are happy we should be sure to thank the good God for our joy. 

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

Meister Ekhart

You might like to try Fr. Brian’s gratitude beads with your rosary.

Maybe you can imagine you are putting flowers at the altar of God in Heaven. After all, he deserves them. And he usually ends up pouring them into your lap.  He loves doing that.

Loose stemless flowers on jeans lap, POV
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Consecration of the U.S. to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

June is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for Catholics. Friday June 12 is the Feast of the Sacred Heart this year. June 11 The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will be consecrating the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The event will be live streamed on the USCCB web page. We are all encouraged to participate in the consecration. We are celebrating Catholics and the Catholic Church in American history for the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I think our Bishops, guided by the Holy Spirit, are also calling us back to the Heart – the Heart of Our Lord without which we can’t ever know him; the heart of the Gospel, the Heart of the Church,  and to our own hearts. Pope Francis in his beautiful encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Dilexit Nos,  wrote that the heart is the center drawing the parts of the human person, spirit soul and body, together. St. Teresa of Avila said that our heart is the throne of Jesus. 

I believe we as a nation are much in need of this call. A renewal of our hearts, and to reflect anew on the whole of Jesus centered in his heart. How can we know him without knowing and acknowledging his heart? 

There are a lot of things wrong with Christian Nationalism. However as I reflect on the Sacred Heart I think that the Jesus they preach is a Jesus with no heart. Our understanding of him will guide our thoughts and actions, permeating our lives. If we see him as heartless we will be heartless too. Our God is love and his greatest attribute is mercy according to our faith. We must return to the heart.

 I know I need to remember that myself when I am angry and outraged at Christian Nationalists. They’re terribly wrong and they are so mean and they cause suffering and death  those they hate and disdain using God to justify it all. But they are still God’s and he loves them. I need clarity about how to speak and act with love as well as standing up for what is right. I really don’t know how to do that regularly. 

With a sense of relief I look forward to this consecration, the special grace that will flow from it. I long for it. I am deeply troubled by the hate and disregard for the dignity and worth of every human person that has become  all too prevalent. So many of us have become mean.  I know I am guilty too. 

Bring me into your heart, Jesus. Bring us all in. 

When we live in the heart of Jesus and we know on a profound level that he lives in ours, we are transformed and so is the world. And no matter how many times we forget his heart  he calls us back. He is calling us now. 

The Bishops have some wonderful suggestions for the consecration. They would like us to pray 250 hours of Eucharistic Adoration, and perform 250 works of mercy. 

There are so many Eucharistic miracles. (See National Catholic Register on the matter or  Histological, immunological and biochemical studies on the flesh and blood of the Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano or the National Library of Medicine https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12491371/) 

A Eucharistic Miracle is when Communion Hosts have started to bleed. These hosts have been taken to be analyzed scientifically by pathologists and in laboratories. Some alleged miracles were rejected but most of these hosts  were found to be heart tissue. Not only were they heart tissue but from a bruised and distressed heart as from someone severely beaten. The blood is consistently type AB, the same blood type found on the Shroud of Turin. Not only that but AB blood is extremely rare. It’s also a blood type anyone can receive. Because Jesus is a universal Giver! 

 This phenomenon reminds us of several things: Jesus is a real person. The Eucharist is truly him. The Eucharist is really the heart of Jesus and at the Heart of our Catholic faith. Eucharistic  Adoration is a perfect response to this. 

And what is prayer without action? We carry out the grace and love we receive in prayer  for “good works, my daughters, good works” as St. Teresa of Avila wrote. 

“Parishes can participate in 250 hours of adoration together by offering a Holy Hour on a weekly or monthly basis leading up to the July 4 anniversary. Parishes and communities can decide how best to set up their holy hours, continue current practices, or invite new people to join. While 250 hours seems like a lot, each person present constitutes an hour prayed. Parishes and communities can also consider how to incorporate both the 250 Works of Mercy alongside the 250 Hours of Adoration. Afterwards, report your community’s participation here.” 

“Individuals and groups can participate in 250 Works of Mercy by engaging in the existing activities and efforts of their parishes, getting involved in new ways, and by participating with local and national organizations on a weekly or monthly basis leading up to the July 4th anniversary. Our works of mercy draw from the deep well of our faith and prayer, constantly reminding us that in tending to our brothers and sisters, we tend to Christ himself. Afterwards, report your community’s participation here. “ – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 

Another great thing to do would be to read, maybe with another person or a group, Pope Francis’ Dilexit Nos. You can find that on the Vatican website, Vatican.va 

Let’s make this a time of rejuvenation of our faith. I’m ready to shed discouragement and disgust for renewed love of God and neighbor. Bring us all in, Lord Jesus. Every one of us. 

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Listening to Our Holy Father with an open heart

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Whenever I listen to our Holy Father, Pope Leo, speak, I feel as if a bad spell was quietly broken, a cloud lifted. I am reminded of the roots of our faith and that I need to get back home to them. 

We have heard again and again that we are all brothers and sisters, that God is love, that God is a God of  life and that Jesus weeps for the harm we do one another. We know we are supposed to love one another as Jesus has loved us. We know that if we commit an act of violence it had better be in self defense or in the defense of the weak or of someone else in danger and that we should only use violence as a judicious last resort. We have heard all these things so many times perhaps they risk sounding trite to us now. 

Our Pope has recently been calling out injustice, war, hate and the profiting from those same things. He reminds us that “Gods Heart is torn,” when he sees the destruction of human life and the damage the perpetrators of violence do to their own souls. I heard these things with relief actually. I’ve been very tuned in to the suffering, injustice and chaos we are seeing at home and abroad. “I speak of peace but when I speak they are for war,” as the Psalmist says. (Ps.120:7) It has been difficult for me to watch some people rejoice in violence and in the sorrow and death of others. I don’t understand it. As St. Teresa of Avila wrote, “Yours are the eyes of compassion through which God looks upon the world.” Well that part doesn’t seem to be going too well for some, and perhaps entirely too well for me. OK what I have really been is furious at the people behind it and at the people laughing at it or glorifying it. 

Pope Leo serenely says we are all brothers and sisters and I am gently but suddenly redirected. I remember that God is love and that I am supposed to be love too. I remember that it isn’t people we fight against in times like these. It’s the powers and principalities of darkness themselves. How have we been taught to render the devil helpless? Not by any method of vainglorious desire for power over people or things, but by the beauty Satan doesn’t have. He has no love, certainly no humility or obedience, gentleness, joy, peacefulness or the true strength found in quiet trust. He can quote scripture all day long but he is only using it as a tool to serve himself, to cause more harm, hate, pride and vanity among the scattered people of God. 

Satan brings confusion but the Holy Spirit gives clarity. That seems to be what listening to Pope Leo does for me as well. I think to myself, “This is why we have a Pope.” 

He is the Vicar of Christ until Our Lord returns. His words are of value to us. I know there has been a lot of silly controversy over his preaching on peace. Some have taken offense and in some cases have even left the Church. (This grieves me deeply and is hard for me to understand). 

We are Catholic. Maybe we don’t always agree with every word the Pope says but we must respect the Pope, love him, pray for him,  and stand with him whatever comes. It’s what we do. We trust his apostolic authority to speak from the Chair of Peter and to guide us in matters of faith and morals. War is a moral issue. If it isn’t what is? The pope is our father in faith. His voice is gentle and directed for the good of all, even when he says “stop!” 

I invite you to allow the Pope to speak to you. Sit down with any passage he has written and ask for the light of the Holy Spirit to bring to the surface for you anything he wants you to hear. Read your chosen passage in an attentive way with an open heart. Let the Chief Shepherd in charge of the flock of Christ call you home. It’s what he is there to do. Remember the bright finery we have in our faith, the endless treasures of the Gospel, the love we have found and that we strive to share. 

Maybe start with this: 

“The heart of the Gospel is the love of God that makes us brothers and sisters. God loves us all, and in his love we are one. In Christ, we belong to one another, called to walk together as neighbors and friends, building a world where peace can dwell. This is the hour for love: to love not in words alone, but in truth, as Jesus loved us.” – Pope Leo XIV 

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8 Minute Guided Prayer of Recollection

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St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church, Carmelite reformer, and great teacher of Prayer, said that what she called the “Prayer of Recollection” was a method of mental prayer the Lord Himself taught her. Here is a video I have made of my brief, guided version of the Prayer of Recollection that you can use to learn it, or for a prayer break during the day. For more on the Prayer of Recollection, try reading my book, Meeting the One who Loves you, the way of prayer of St. Teresa of Avila from Our Sunday Visitor.

Meeting the One Who Loves You; St. Teresa of Avila’s Way of Prayer

Meeting the One Who Loves You; St. Teresa of Avila’s way of prayer

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Why meditate on the Suffering and Death of Jesus?

  the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald.

It is a pronounced characteristic of our Catholic faith that both personally and as Church we meditate deeply on the suffering of Jesus. Our crucifixes, art and literature are often graphic in their portrayals of his Passion and Death. The Saints emphasize this practice, the rosary we pray, the Church calendar, all return us to our suffering Lord. In the Stations of the Cross we walk with Jesus through his suffering step by step. Why do we do this? To an outsider it might seem ghoulish to dwell on the lurid details of his torn flesh, his bloody sweat, the tears he shed. 

The mystics say that Our Lord’s Passion is like a fire of love. The more we draw near to this fire the more we are warmed and transformed by it. 

I am a deeply sensitive, and, I hope, compassionate person. I am always uncomfortable with the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary (traditionally prayed on Tuesdays and Fridays. During Lent it is also on Sundays).  Meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries, we follow Jesus through his Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, his Scourging at the Pillar, his Crown of Thorns, his Carrying the Cross, his Crucifixion and Death. It’s tough. But I don’t want to leave him alone in his sorrow. I want to share in it as his mother did. I want to comfort and help him. Also we can’t expect to only share the sweetness of the Lord without the bitterness of the cross.  Part of love is acceptance. I don’t want to only love part of Jesus I want to love all of him, accept everything. That means following him not only in his joyous times but right into the valley of death as well, and the cruelty he experienced from others. 

For me the fact of the betrayal of Judas, Our Lord’s broken heart, his grief, the abuse heaped on him, have helped me accept the sorrows in my own life. Sharing in his pain has made me more able to not look away from the suffering of others but to ‘weep with those who weep.”  (Romans 12:15)

A Methodist minister friend told me he noticed that Catholics don’t see ourselves as witnesses of the events in the life of Jesus. We think of ourselves as taking part in a very present way in our prayer and especially at mass. We are there at the Last Supper at mass. We don’t think we are witnessing something. It’s not a story. We are in it.  I like that. Maybe this points to why we submerge ourselves in the torture and cruelty of his death in such detail. We’re helping ourselves be there. 

Our Lord’s Passion teaches about love as intense faithfulness and determination, sacrifice, acceptance. It helped me stand by my husband all through his fight with brain cancer. In his darkest and fearful moments I listened to him talk about his feelings of raw desolation, anger, and even shame, of terror, of feeling there was no comfort anywhere. In spite of my love for him, part of me wanted to run and hide from the enormity of what he was expressing.  

I had no mitigating words to say. The profound suffering of another person is frightening to be present to. When he eventually asked how I felt about this on a spiritual level, all I had was the fact of Christ’s suffering. At least as we went through this with cancer we had a God with us who didn’t die gracefully in a shower of rose petals but was coldly executed, naked and bleeding like an animal, nailed to a cross, with a cry of spiritual abandonment only just having died on his lips. 

My husband nodded gravely. He got it. 

 1565
Oil on canvas
Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice

The Christian life is illuminated by the choice of Jesus to take our suffering on himself. It was our sins, our iniquities, yes, but our suffering too, according to Isaiah. 

“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering… by his wounds we are healed” Isaiah 53:4-5

The incomparable light he generated by choosing to undergo his Passion as an offering shines forever. It reminds me in my own darkest times, of his compassion. My tears are his too. St. Teresa of Avila says so great is his compassion that when you visit him in his agony he will forget his own sorrow in looking at you and wanting to comfort you. 

As we approach Holy Week let’s avail ourselves of the opportunity to love Jesus through his suffering and death, and to let him love us too.

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Where there is hatred, let me sow love

Meditating on the prayer of St. Francis, I thought that from a Teresian perspective, when we pray that where there is hatred we may sow love – we are already doing it. Our prayer, as we pray it, is sowing love in place of hatred. In a mysteries way God shares his grace with us and through us in our prayer. We become instruments of peace in a mystical way.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

Right now, in this time of global violence, cruelty and chaos that is in almost every way out of our control, it is a relief to open the heart to God and let his love and grace flow through us to the world, to know that he is doing something and that we can be part of his loving transformation of the people and situations most in need of his kindness. We never know what God will do and where he will send his Spirit, or how he will act on the hearts of the people we pray for. However, we can have total faith that he will respond to our prayers.

I invite you to memorize the Prayer of St. Francis if you haven’t already. Try dedicating your time of silent prayer to sitting with it, going over it as slowly as you can without losing focus. You don’t have to think about it or examine it so much as concentrating on the words, letting each one drop into your heart like a pearl dropped into still water where it drifts slowly to the bottom to rest. Know that God is within you and working with you for your good, and for every creature. You will be sowing love in the world, pardon, light, hope, joy, as an instrument of his peace.

In today’s Gospel, John 4:5-42, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that the water he will give her will become a fountain welling up within her, giving eternal life. To me that fountain is love, his transforming love. It wells up within us helping us to live out this prayer. It not only transforms us but everyone we splash with it, both in our prayer and in our interactions with people and the things we do during the day. Every day we are given opportunities to seek to understand rather than be understood, to seek to love rather than be loved, to give rather than receive. It becomes a habit, easier and easier the more we submerge ourselves in the water of his love that never runs out.


O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.”

We pray like a fountain gushing out and watering the whole world, flowing out and touching everyone. We live our lives in response to this grace given to us. We are transformed in it and so is the whole world.

St. Francis, pray for us.

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Lay down your verbal arms for Lent

I would like to invite you to a very practical and frequently unappreciated form of abstinence: that of refraining from words that offend and hurt our neighbor. Let us begin by disarming our language, avoiding harsh words and rash judgement, refraining from slander and speaking ill of those who are not present and cannot defend themselves. Instead, let us strive to measure our words and cultivate kindness and respect in our families, among our friends, at work, on social media, in political debates, in the media and in Christian communities. In this way, words of hatred will give way to words of hope and peace.

Pope Leo XIV, Message for Lent 2026

The Holy Father has, in his serene and gentle way, thrown down a gauntlet with this challenge. This is a very tough form of fasting, especially now in these times of political extremes, immovable opinions, varying understandings of reality and a shocking lack of empathy or compassion. Language is too often used in flagrant attempts to dehumanize those who differ from us In this age of rage, are we contributing to the lack of peace by our words? We long for justice but do we really care about the effect our words have on others or are we just mad? How do we do better? What steps can we take to purify the violence of our speech and still speak truth when necessary?

We need some steps to get there, some tools, a frame work.

Jesus said, “out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
(Luke 6:45, Matthew 12:34) He said our sinful and hateful words begin in our sinful and hateful hearts. Practically speaking, this means we need to master our thoughts. When we master our thoughts, we master our words. Here is my tool box for disarmament, if you will.

On mastering our thoughts, one of the best things one can do is replace them with something else. A dear priest told me once during Confession that every time I had a hateful or judgmental thought about a certain person I was struggling with, I should mentally say, “I renounce that thought in the Name of Jesus Christ.” Guess what? It worked! That person is among my inner circle of friends and has been for many years now. She loves telling people the story.

Some years back I found myself obsessively wrapped in raging thoughts about a betrayal in my life. My rotating anger was no longer helpful. I didn’t need to talk about my feelings. This pre-occupation of mine became a problem with family and friends. Nobody wanted to hear it anymore. I didn’t want to hear it anymore. I wasn’t healing, just stuck. I had to stop.

I remembered that I had tools I knew worked. So I began to mentally repeat the names of Jesus and Mary whenever I had the urge to talk about it or think abut it all again. It worked! I went from thinking about the whole thing at least once every 15 minutes to hardly ever. If we don’t think about something like that, we stop talking about it all the time, as well.

Another thing I was doing at the same time as forming the habit of repeating the holy names, was spending time daily in silent interior prayer. My main way of doing this at that time was memorizing passages of the Bible, prayerfully and silently going over and over them in my mind. This is called Ruminatio, a loving meditative recitation of God’s Word in the heart, from the monastic tradition. It’s a “chewing” on the Word until it becomes sweetness in the heart. Sweetness in the heart is what we need most.

Another thing silent prayer does is slow our minds down and makes our emotions less volatile. We have time to think before we speak rather than just spark into fire whenever we are challenged. The Lord is in us and he calms the destructive storms. (Matthew 8:23–27, Mark 4:35–41, Luke 8:22–25). The waves of our emotions calmed, we are more likely to speak wisely and less hurtfully.

Here are some helpful considerations from a modern proverb of uncertain origin.

There are three gates your words should pass through before you speak. Ask these questions of yourself:

Is what I want to say true?

Is it necessary?

Is it kind?

If what you want to say doesn’t pass through all three of these three gates, don’t say it!

What to do instead? Go for a fast walk and repeat the Holy Name of Jesus or the Jesus prayer the whole time. Don’t come back until you are calm. (The Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”).

Remember this is not something you are doing alone. God is with you and his grace will aid you. So ask him.

May the words of my mouth, and the thoughts of my heart, be acceptable to you, my God.”

Psalm 19:14

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Lenten listening

This year for Lent, the Holy Father, Pope Leo, is asking us to “listen.” He says listening to the Word of God will train our ability to listen to the voices God wants us to hear, such as the cries of the poor and the marginalized, the sick and the suffering. I wasn’t sure how that worked but as I have been reflecting on it, the practice of Lectio Divina came to mind. In this prayer we aren’t just reading Scripture texts. we are “listening” with an open heart to any words or phrases that stand out to us as we read. We understand these as God’s words to us personally in that moment. So we prayerfully repeat them in our minds, pondering them in our hearts. Then we respond to what God is saying to us, replying to him. Then we rest in interior silence for a while. Then we go out and act on his Word.

If we learn and pray Lectio Divina regularly, it becomes the way we hear Scripture all the time. When it is read at mass, we will hear God speaking to us, even as we are aware of hearing his Word as community too. We will be attuned to him speaking and we automatically apply it to our lives without hesitation.

The Benedictines talk about “Lectio on Life,” This is being aware of how God is speaking to you in your daily life. He may speak in a song that comes on at the right moment, something you read or that someone says to you, even something you overhear from a stranger when you’re out and about. It can be a life event, even a small one, that stands out to you as symbolic or providential. I used to say, when something like that happened, “If this was a dream, what would it mean?” I said this because in the way we interpret the meaning of a dream, in the same way, could be done with something that really happened as well, drawing out its meaning.

What if we hear or see something happening around us, read about it or it comes to us in prayer, or keeps returning to our thoughts as we go about that day? We can use the same process of Lectio Divina to ponder it in our hearts, ask God what he is saying to us in this event or thing we heard during the day, respond to him about it, and go out and act on it. This could be noticing the young woman at the store putting her groceries back. It gets to you. Just in seeing that through God’s loving and merciful eyes as a person of prayer, you understand the message and you act on it. Ask her what’s going on, listen to her, and do something about her trouble. Maybe you can’t pick up her whole tab but when she tells you she was trying to get after school snacks for her kids before she picks them up, maybe you can at least get today’s snacks. Then thank God for the opportunity to see, hear and serve him. That’s just one quick way this could play out. Being in tune with God helps you notice her. Otherwise perhaps you wouldn’t have.

One of the things I am doing this Lent is staying away from the news during the week. I can always catch up at the end of the week. Like a lot of people I am hyper vigilant lately because of all the violence, chaos, suffering and injustice happening every day. I’m overwhelmed and so is everyone I talk to about it. What I am hoping for with backing off from the constant news is to use that time for silence and prayer. I also get to the point sometimes when my mind of cluttered up with all the things I am seeing, reading and hearing that I think the clutter interferes with real listening.

I want to listen to life and the people around me and allow God to raise the voices to me he wants me to hear. I am probably too overwhelmed to discern them now. I’m hoping God will sort me out during this gracious time of Lent. Going into the desert with Jesus is one of my favorite things to do. Sometimes I having to skip or run to keep up with him but still, I am so ready to slow down and focus on him and what he wants to talk about or show me, or even if he just wants to hang out.

May the Lord open the ears of our hearts to hear him.

May the voices now “blurred by comfort” as Pope Leo said, and the faces we don’t see,

come into sharp relief for us

through our prayer, listening, fasting and almsgiving this Holy Lent,

Oh Jesus, “For your voice is sweet, and your face is beautiful.” (Song of Songs 2:14)

* If you don’t know how to Lectio 😉

I have written about it here



















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Prayer and solidarity in a dark church

The church was dark and warm when I came in. I could hear sleepy children stirring in the corners, and see the shapes of people in the pews. I had missed the rosary but adoration would go on until late. The one light shone on the exposed Eucharist on the alter. I sat down in the back, then knelt to pray in the silence.

I noticed cantors were standing in a dimly lit alcove. One of them stood up and read something in Spanish that I thought was from the Gospel of John. I left off studying my Spanish this summer and I’ve already forgotten a lot but it sounded like something from that Gospel. I can’t remember what it was now. Jesus calming the waves? There were prayers. Something about children, loved ones, fear. The reader sounded not only somber but sad. They sang a Mexican hymn about walking with the Lord.

It sounds like any Adoration night in a Catholic Church. However I haven’t yet mentioned that the feeling as I came through the church doors was overwhelming sadness, an oppressive sorrow that was almost crushing. I can’t be sure that was what people there were feeling but if they were it would make sense.

This parish I was visiting is primarily Latino parish. We have had ICE here the last couple of weeks. We are not a big town. We used to be small but I suppose we’re medium now. Local TV has reported on where agents been sited, arrests they have made. Local police have made announcements telling us not to interfere with ICE. The popular news anchor has posted videos of ICE activity people have sent him. Unusually for this conservative bastion of a town, there have been school walk-outs, protests, prayer vigils, almost every day that ICE has been here.

Obviously this situation has caused stress for a lot of people. Nothing like in Minnesota. In fact I have only seen a couple of ICE agents in person, and one abandoned car with the doors open on the road.

I didn’t feel like trying to do any structural mental prayer. My mind was unusually clear and still. Making it do anything felt like introducing unnecessary clutter so I went with just sitting still, being conscious, being present.

As time went by I felt sorrow grow. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was all of us.

More prayers. I heard the phrases, “my heart,” and “your heart” several times. Another song about trusting God, I think. People came in, others left quietly, sleeping children over their shoulders. A boy came around with a box of LED votive lights. Soon there was one at the end of each pew, flickering like candles. The priest walked down the aisle checking on everyone. For me sorrow kept deepening. I began to feel an intense wreath of warmth around my heart.

Silence. More Scripture, more prayers. The trust and love they were expressing reminded me of our family’s attitude when my husband Bob had brain cancer. “Everything will be OK and even if it’s not OK it will be OK,” we used to say. In other words, “This is terrible and we have hope that it can end well. But no matter what has to happen, we will be with you, Lord, and we will always have you.”

They were live streaming the event; probably for anyone too ill to attend or too afraid to come to church or leave the house. I thought that the people in the church were probably not the ones who were especially targets. They were here to pray for everyone else. It would be likely that they are worried about someone they knew, a family member maybe.

I was likely the only white person there. I could have no idea what this community within my community was going through or what it was like to be them right now. This prayer vigil was a vigil for peace. It had been announced as a way to “put everything in God’s hands.” It struck me that the people I was sitting with likely did not have much they could do about the situation. All they had was God.

I felt such gratitude that they were letting me sit with them at the feet of Jesus even though I can’t possibly share what they were going through. I had that sense of astonishment that I was sitting among a persecuted people. Maybe some of them didn’t know what had happened to someone they loved, whether they were being tortured or starved or beaten, whether they were far away in a dangerous country, whether they would ever see that person again. It was one of those moments when I couldn’t believe this is my country.

I looked at the people around me again. “Jesus I know these are your people,” I prayed. “I will do whatever I can, whatever you ask me to do for them. Just make me able.” My eyes filled. “Thank you for letting me be with them tonight.“

After about an hour, which passed quickly, I left.

I talked to my daughter Roise about the sadness I felt. Was I right that there was sadness in the voices of the cantors and readers? Was I projecting a pleading sentiment onto them? Was it my feelings coming out?

Roise suggested that as Catholics we believe that we are the Body of Christ together. Especially in the Eucharist, we are one together, sharing everything. Maybe I was sensing their feelings or maybe I was just part of the Body of Christ feeling its pain. When one part suffers all the others do too.

We thought about it some more. “Imagine how sad Jesus is about all this.”

Neither of us had anything else to say after that.

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