Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Deutero-Isaiah announces today that “the LORD will comfort his own and show mercy to the afflicted.” The prophet wrote during the Babylonian Exile and gave the Judahites hope that God was about to intervene on their behalf.
Our day and age knows a thing or two about exiles, millions yearning for divine intervention, especially in Ukraine where crimes against humanity continue. Over seven million Ukrainian women and children alone have been sent abroad.
Refugees cry out as they always have, “Where are you, O LORD!?”
The LORD might rightly ask us in return, “Where am I?! Where are you?!”
President John F. Kennedy famously said, “God’s work on earth must truly be our own.” We are to be the instruments of God’s justice and mercy so that compassion and right can triumph for the most vulnerable among us.
Tyrants have been driving people from their homes since time immemorial. The United Nations estimates more than 82 million refugees in 2023. Most are victims of wars or ethnic cleansing. Many are people Americans know nothing about. What can we do?
Here are some practical considerations:
- Pray especially for the safety of the Ukrainian people and a swift end to the carnage.
- Remember that the Holy Family fled from a tyrant as exiles to a land that was not their own.
- Appreciate that our country is largely made up of the descendants of refugees.
- Challenge attitudes that dehumanize immigrants as “other.”
- Reject those who aspire to power by cruelly using refugees as pawns or props to gain publicity and votes.
- Welcome the many immigrants who have become a part of our parish community.
A suggested Ignatian style meditation:
Holy Week is on the horizon. In your mind’s eye, imagine Jesus bearing his cross to Golgotha, with refugees following and bearing theirs. See in these exiles the worn and anxious faces of your own ancestors who came to American shores. Stay with this image for a time. Then become part of the scene.
Where do we land in the drama? Do we lighten the load of their crosses? Are we acting as God’s agents in showing “mercy to the afflicted?” Is God’s work on earth truly our own? Or do we silently stand on the sidelines?
Individually none of us can change the world but each of us can change our little part of it.
-Timothy J. Cronin