I come with nothing much at all. No political power or army, no wealth or influence. Nothing but my pleas, my imperfect love and my helplessness. And that's nothing much at all. But do hear me as I pray.
See, Your people suffering, dying for Your sake. Your heart is pierced through as You watch Your people massacred, beheaded.
See, this brutality. These, who no longer feel their conscience. They are Your children too, no? Are you not angry with these murderers? Do you not want to send down fire to burn them all into ashes? Or order a plague upon them like You did to the Egyptians?
Yet, have I come to know You enough to glimpse a little into Your Sacred Heart? Watching them in their evil deeds and still, You love them with everything You are and desire for their souls to be saved. Your heart is pierced through even more as You watch them disfigure themselves, disfigured increasingly from Your image and likeness. Tears, streaming from Your eyes without stop. The wrenching pain in Your heart does not cease.
See, too, my heavy heart, my sadness. My helplessness. My self-doubts that I can ever witness to You in such a martyrdom. My hidden hope that You will never put me through such a test because I know I might fail You. See my distracted heart that will soon forget the plight of my faraway brothers and sisters until the next article I read or the next invitation to another prayer session. My hypocrisy that pleads for Your help for my dying fellow Christians but puts aside the long overdue reconciliations with those whose lives I have taken by my unChristlike thoughts, words and deeds.
See, Jesus Dear, those in power who are too calculative to lend a hand. Too afraid to speak up, to get implicated. See, too, those others who go on living in their indifferences.
But should we go to war? To fight a war with war? Should we start dropping bombs to wipe out Your people? Surely, there must be a more loving solution. Surely, You can do something. Maybe, in my mind is the thought of what You did to Saul on the road to Damascus. Maybe, I wish for a quick-fix, a dramatic and radical conversion of the whole world. But maybe, this isn't what You would do this time. Maybe, You want something more subtle, more thorough.
And so, Lord, teach us Your ways and move our hearts. Move the hearts of those to whom You have allotted power and authority to intervene and save.
Give us courage not to run from our sadness. Give us a compassionate concern to be in solidarity with those suffering through our prayers for them.
Open the eyes of conscience of those who have gone astray, knock on the door of their hearts and plant in them the realisation of what they are truly doing.
For those who have turned their backs on You like Peter did in the face of threat, grant them the grace to forgive themselves. Let not their destiny be like Judas' on the tree, not even as they live on in this life. Strengthen their faith in the silence of their hearts like You did to Nicodemus who came to You in the night. And fill them with Your Pentecostal Spirit.
For those who have been killed, do not let their souls wander restlessly and bitterly but bring every one of them into Your comforting embrace, there to share in Your eternal glory.
And for those who are going to die this moment on, ever-loving Jesus, stay close to them, hold them with Your graces. That they will make perfect Your image and likeness in them by repeating after You, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing. Into Your hands, I commend my spirit." By this, to bear the greatest witness that You are the One True God, the God of infinite love and mercy, and render unto You the glory of Your name.
Finally, after speaking so much and laying out a to-do-list for You, let me at last be silent. Let me sit here with You for a while, my dear Jesus. With Your aching and bleeding heart. To be with You and feel with You, to tear with You and to love with You.
Grant us all Your peace.
Amen.
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