Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit, inspire these words, open our hearts and minds to be one in your love today. Amen.
I am tired, but it is more than that. I am weary. Weary of this world. Weary of COVID, weary of politics, of arguing, and disrespect. Weary of war. Weary of horrible news and images, senseless violence. I am weary.
Before I became a priest, I taught French and Spanish at Marist Catholic High School for 22 years. I was doing my student teaching in a French classroom at South Eugene High School on May 21st, 1998 when my mentor teacher was called away for an interview on a French-speaking radio station. His niece was a student at Thurston High School. Throughout my time at Marist, I learned and we practiced, lockdown drills. Turn off the lights, close the blinds, lock the door, sit on the floor in silence, away from windows and doors. Later, a new protocol was put into place as first staff, then students went through active-threat training drills, A.L.I.C.E. training, Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate. Toward the end of my teaching career, I was tasked with talking to my students about the very real possibility of someone coming to our school intent on harming us. We learned how to barricade our doors and windows, which routes where the safest exits from our room depending on where the threat was.
And finally, in the event that we couldn’t evacuate, we learned how to counter, how to make it harder for someone to harm us. This was something I NEVER thought I would have to learn and teach my students. This week, I am weary. I came across this prayer from Bishop David Reed, Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of West Texas. We will use it today in our Prayers of the People. I found it helpful. I pray that you will as well.
O God our Father, whose beloved Son took children into his arms and blessed them: Give us grace to entrust your beloved children of Uvalde to your everlasting care and love, and bring them fully into your heavenly kingdom. Pour out your grace and loving-kindness on all who grieve; surround them with your love; and restore their trust in your goodness. We lift up to you our weary, wounded souls and ask you to send your Holy Spirit to take away the anger and violence that infects our hearts, and make us instruments of your peace and children of the light. In the Name of Christ who is our hope, we pray. Amen.
Today, with you, I lift up my weary, wounded soul and pray for the Holy Spirit to use us to bring about peace and unity.
In today’s gospel reading Jesus prays for his disciples and for all of those who would come to know and follow Jesus’ way of love. “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.” That’s US! We are the ones who are trying to believe the witness passed down to us from these first apostles to where and when we are now. Jesus’ prayer for us, for this world, is that we may all be one.
Today’s gospel reading is the basis for Marist Catholic High School’s motto: We are one. You can find it painted on the walls of buildings, in classrooms, on uniforms, t-shirts and hats, and as a part of many teams and groups’ opening prayers and chants. To come together, to be “one” is a tricky thing to do. But…when it happens, it can produce an amazing, powerful force for good, for care, for love in our world today. I witnessed it in the girls’ soccer, boys golf and co-ed pétanque teams that I coached, as players supported, encouraged, and willed one another on to their best performances. And I witnessed it in classrooms as we came together to include, value, and do our best work as a cohesive unit. And as choirs, bands, and cast members came together to create amazing pieces of performance art. Together, we are truly able to accomplish SO much more. And along the way we find value, belonging, and love.
One of my favorite places to witness the “we are one” motto enacted was at Marist Junior Encounters, yearly retreats held at St. Benedict’s Lodge on the McKenzie River. Over these three days, groups of junior boys and girls journey together, discovering who they are individually, as a class, and as God’s children. Here by the river and amidst the trees, they experience the radical, transforming power of God’s love. These experiences bring together and bond students in ways never before imagined, as they come to know just how loved they are by their family, friends, and community, and by God.
“That they may be one as we are one.” This is the prayer of Jesus for his disciples and for our broken and hurting world today. Jesus’ prayer entreats our loving Parent God to help humanity become completely one, to experience the life-affirming, life-changing love that the Creator God has for Jesus, “so that the world may know that you have loved them EVEN as you have loved me…so that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” We ARE one. If, and when, we come to realize that we are loved with the same infinitely deep, unconditional love that exists between our loving God, The Lover and God’s Beloved, Jesus. We are loved by, with, and in love its very self!
In this time of enormous separation and senseless violence, what CAN unite us, what DOES unite us is the love of Christ. It is a unity that has its being in, and grows out of, the love of God. What can possibly unite our fractured world? LOVE.
Love always wins over and against and above, every other thing, no matter how terrible, unthinkable, unspeakable, love is there, God is there, in Christ, suffering, sobbing, loving. Love is the last word. And when we come together to grieve, to support, worship and pray, to be nourished in the Eucharist, we are reminded: for God SO loved the world that he offered up his beloved son as a counterexample to the hatred, violence, and disunity of our world. In the Easter preface for our Eucharistic prayer we proclaim:
(Rite I) by his death (he) hath destroyed death, and by his rising to life again hath won for us everlasting life.
(EOW) Dying, you destroyed our death. Rising, you restored our life.
(Rite II) By his death he has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us everlasting life.
We are one. One in the love and hope of Christ. We grieve together. We somehow move forward together. We share the message of God’s love, of Jesus’ life and prayer for us, that we become one in the love of God.
Siblings in Christ, God’s beloved children all of us, may we come together united in the love and goodness of God.
Amen.
