Looking for a daily devotion during Advent? Every day U.S. Catholic will bring you words of wisdom and questions for reflection from different spiritual writers. Click here to get them delivered to your inbox daily!
Mercifully grant peace in our days. Through your help may we be freed from present distress. Have mercy on women and children, homeless in foul weather, ranting like bees among gutted barns and stiles. Have mercy on those (like us) clinging one to another under fire. Have mercy on the dead, befouled, trodden like snow in hedges and thickets. Have mercy, dead man, whose grandiose gentle hope died on the wing, whose body stood like a tree between strike and fall, stood like a cripple on his wooden crutch. We cry: Halt! We cry: Password! Dishonored heart, remember and remind, the open sesame: from there to here, from innocence to us: Hiroshima Dresden Guernica Selma Sharpeville Coventry Dachau Vietnam Afghanistan Iraq. Into our history, pass! Seed hope. Flower peace.
Daniel Berrigan, “Prayer for the Morning Headlines” in Prayer for the Morning Headlines (Apprentice House)
Reflection questions:
1. What is the difference between faith and courage?
2. When I am feeling lost, or when things seem difficult and scary, where or to whom do I turn?
Add comment