The God Who Suffers With Us

The inexplicable mystery of God, revealed in Jesus, is of a God who bears our burdens, laments our sorrows, who suffers with us, living and dying in silent solidarity with the poor and the powerless, with a love that is stronger than death itself.  

Confronted with the merciless violence and hatred of this world, His only weapon is mercy, kindness, friendship, forgiveness and sacrificial love.  He invites us to live and to be like Him, as best we can given our frailties, failures and fears.  

What we celebrate in just a few more days at Christmas is that He chose to be born as a child as vulnerable and needy and defenseless as these children evacuated from Aleppo earlier this week.  It is in their need and that of the millions of refugees who have fled this or so many other wars that we must seek Him, bind His wounds, comfort and console Him, welcome Him and give Him shelter.   

Despite the past six years of civil war in Syria and the pitiless destruction of Aleppo, I continue to believe that the merciful, meek, persecuted and peacemakers are truly blessed.   Despite the cynical triumph of the power of depraved and relentless violence this week, I believe that darkness will not have the last word, in our world, in that tortured country, in our hearts, now or in the future. 

Come, Lord Jesus. 

   

St.Nicholas, Pray for Us!

 

Today is the feast of St.Nicholas the Wonderworker.  Many places, people and professions have taken him as their patron.  He is the patron saint of my own state of Alaska and of Russia; of fishermen and women and of children. It is the feast day St.Nicholas Orthodox Church, our neighbors in downtown Juneau.  May you have the joy of the feast!

On his feast day in many countries, parents give gifts to their children on his feast day in remembrance of how he saved the three daughters of a poor man from being sold into slavery to pay off his debts by giving them each a bag of gold.  

I think of St. Nicholas as the patron of modern day slaves, those who are trafficked around the world.  Many of them, like the girls saved by St. Nicholas are trafficked because of poverty and indebtedness.  Catholic Relief Services has made working to end trafficking, as well as climate change and the Syrian refugee crisis, one of the three top priorities of its program work in 2016/2017.  To learn more about trafficking and efforts to end it, go to www.crs.org. 

Light in the Darkness

Children at St. Francis Catholic Church, Aleppo, Syria, 

During this season of Advent, it is essential to never forget that Jesus, who as a child was so small and vulnerable, utterly powerless in all of the ways that the world judges power and might, is the Light of the world that the darkness can never overcome.  He is the Prince of Peace who has overcome the power of sin and death and darkness forever.  He invites us to be light in the darkness as well.

All of us, men and women and boys and girls, people of faith and people of good will, have an indispensible part in dispelling the darkness. 

A powerful reminder of this is the example of  the Latin-rite Catholic parish of St. Francis of Assisi in Aleppo, Syria which has dedicated their children’s Mass each month to prayer for peace – peace in Aleppo, in Syria and throughout the region.  The children bring up candles at the beginning of Mass and pray together the Prayer of St. Francis.   

Earlier this week the Order of Friars Minor (the Franciscans, who, among their other responsibilities, oversee the churches and shrines in the Holy Land) invited Catholics and other Christians to follow the example of this parish in Aleppo and pray on the first Sunday of each month for peace, preferably at the children’s Mass (or the mass frequented by the most families with children.)   

At the Cathedral in Juneau, we're taking up this invitation this Sunday at the 11:00am Mass(which is the Mass that most families with children attend).  

Join us if you can!

If that's not possible, please pray the Prayer of St. Francis in union with children and their families, in Aleppo, in Syria and around the world, who long for peace throughout the world and for an end to war, especially in Syria and the Middle East,

  

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.

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.