Walking With My Brother

As I meditate before Your most Blessed Sacrament, please bless me, Holy Lord, with Your presence and guidance.

Tell me about the poor whom you want to help, the sick whom you have seen suffer, the sinner whom you would convert, the persons who are alienated from you, and whose affections you wish to win back. For all recite a fervent prayer that comes from the heart; and surely the prayers are heartfelt which we say for those whom we love, and who love us.

Oh my Jesus. There are so many people hurting during this time. So many who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs and their livelihoods and their income and their ability to support their families and their workers, who cannot pay their bills, who are standing by, impotently, watching their way of life dissolve.

Not our leaders, Lord. Not all those continuing to receive regular pay. They are insulated from the most difficult suffering by their on-going salaries and benefits that continue without interruption. Help these ones, in our luxury and our comparatively carefree lives, to be generous, to act with generosity and with mercy during this time.

But there are so many others, Holy Lord — the most vulnerable of our world, even before this pandemic — people, especially those with truncated educations, who are just getting started in life or in a fledgling career, hourly workers, part-time workers, farmers and ag workers, restaurant and other small business owners, whose success is so critical to the well-being of their employees, millions of people, gracious and loving God, who have no way out of this without all our help. And the front line workers — the doctors, nurses, and other health care providers, police, fire, EMTs — they do their work every day risking their own lives, leaving themselves and their families vulnerable to illness and death.

These are the ones who are carrying the burden of this time, Father. Along with the ill and dying, certainly, and in no way am I minimizing the pain and suffering of the ill and dying, but so, too, are these other ones suffering so immensely.

And their children, Holy Lord, the children. How will they emerge from all this without terrible scars? Some, maybe even many, will thrive in those stable homes with parents who love and care for them and are prepared to assume the responsibility of their education. But what about those whose parents are struggling with financial obligations they cannot keep, jobs that have evaporated, jobs, which may never return, housing threatened by eviction or foreclosure. Those families and their children who are imprisoned together in forced isolation, some without food, many already suffering in circumstances highly stressed before all this started — by excessive drinking and drugs, abuse, physical and emotional violence, children who are separated from a part-time parent or grand-parent or from friends. What of all these ones, dear Lord? What of them?

I don’t have answers for them or even the right questions, Father. But You do. You know what each needs, what our country and our world need. Please have mercy on all of these ones, Holy Lord, and our whole world.

Through Your Amazing Grace, please capture our attention, Father, and help us each find our way to You and through You to somehow righting this world that has been so sorely upended.
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I place before you, also, Father, those special ones — You know who they are — from whom I am separated, whose reunion with me, with our family, is unlikely without Your holy intervention. Again, Father, I don’t know their needs well enough to even be specific in my prayers for them. And what I might deem to be their need may not, in fact, be their need in Your sight.

So I pray for their souls, Father, that You call to them, seek them relentlessly, and help them to turn to You, to give their lives over to Your plan and to Your way for them. Look upon them with mercy, Holy Lord, as I know You do in Your graciousness.

And in the meantime, until the broken can be made whole once again, help me to see in them the children You see, to love them as You do.
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I also place before You our friend’s twin sister, who is and has been for several years now in severe, debilitating pain. Again, I don’t know her as You do, Holy Father, but I pray that You make her and them a miracle as only You know how to do, in Your mercy.
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Finally, Father, there is so much evil and corrupting temptation stalking our world that lures unwitting souls every day to hatred and violence. Send Your angels of justice and protection to our aid and to the aid of Your truth. Strip these forces of their saccharine speech and their artifice, unmask them and expose their dark intent. And allow Your people a clear vision of their wretchedness that we may break free of their clutches and find our way, once again, to You.

I pray all these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.