Christ Our Light Catholic Church - Loudonville, NY

March 15 and 16
Second Sunday of Lent

From Deacon Dick~

AN INVITATION TO UNIVERSAL SOLIDARITY

We don’t hear much about the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Scriptures, but it is relevant to the situation in our world.  I came across this writing from Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM and offer it in edited form.

Only one book in the Bible is named after an emotion:  the Book of Lamentations.  Jeremiah is said to have written it to express grief over the people’s exile from Jerusalem when they were invaded by the Babylonians in 587 BCE.  The book reads more like an expression of universal sadness over the human situation … a universal sadness that invites us to universal solidarity.

The Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha expresses the devastation of grief and the longing for peace:

I wish I could wake up and find electricity on all day long.

I wish I could hear the birds sing again, no shooting and no buzzing drones.

I wish my desk would call me to hold my pen and write again, or at least plow through a novel, revisit a poem, or read a play.

All around me are nothing...but silent walls...and people sobbing...without sound.

We are transformed by way of tears … a hidden characteristic of the work of the Spirit.  Tears proceed from deep inside where we are most truly ourselves.  Tears reveal the depths at which and from which we care.

In universal solidarity, may we offer our tears for all the human family.  AMEN!