Focus on God

There’s a certain apprehension lying over the nation right now, a fear, an uneasiness, a sense of walking in the dark.

It doesn’t matter how you voted in the recent election. There are things you are worried about.

Yesterday, I went online to order a book. I had an Amazon gift card — that present people give you when they have absolutely no idea what you want. But I found myself, instead of ordering a book, going to the website of the Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries, checking their Amazon wish list, and ordering a giant package of toothbrushes.

Why? Well, like millions of people, I want to do something. I need to do something.

The mission of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries is sponsored by the Jesuits of the Central and Southern Provinces. Its mission, according to its website, is “to offer privileged and preferential religious care to the poor, with a focus on pastoral accompaniment and sacramental ministry with the migrant population on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.”

The Jesuit Border ministry is not a political organization. They visit migrant camps and shelters on both sides of the border. Primarily, they offer Mass and spiritual care, but they also offer humanitarian aid, like sanitary items, shampoo, baby wipes and powdered milk, and yes, toothbrushes.

You can find their ministry online, and you can hear about their work by visiting The Jesuit Border Podcast.

What else have I done? Well, like many people, I’m finding it hard to listen to the news right now. But we yearn for community, something I, and our divided country, need badly. So, I signed up for an e-course with Monasteries of the Heart, which is a project of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania. This e-course is a couple of weeks of reflective reading and sharing that focuses on the writings of the late Sister Mary Lou Kownacki, who blogged under the name “Old Monk.” The e-course is based on her book, “Everyday Sacred, Everywhere Beauty.”

During our first Zoom meeting, we grappled with this mantra from Sister Kownacki: “Engrave this upon my heart: ‘There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story.'”

There’s a challenging thought for our times. Maybe it’s a mantra we should pray with every morning.

Like many, I was appalled at the dehumanizing words and lies spoken about migrants in the recent election, and the joy expressed about the threats to tear families apart by deporting hard working people hoping for citizenship. Words hurt.

Then, shortly after the election, I was listening to a radio show. A woman was describing her disappointment with the election and the down-ticket votes on some reproductive issues. In a suggestion of ways to protest, she jokingly said she could “go out and have some abortions.”

I gasped. I felt I’d been gut-punched. How could someone joke about abortion like that?

What has happened to the way we speak of humanity, the poor in the guise of the migrant or the unborn? The death row prisoner? The homeless?

St. John Paul II said, “Love for others, and in the first place love for the poor, in which the Church sees Christ in himself, is made concrete in the promotion of justice.”

What else can I do? Pray.

In the poem “Praying,” Mary Oliver wrote prayer “isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.”

And Sister Kownacki writes, “For me, there is only one measure for authentic prayer: am I becoming kinder, more tolerant, more courageous, more god-like?”

How am I measuring up?

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