by Chris Sparks
It was a bad weekend for the innocent civilians of Israel and Palestine.
It’s been a bad series of years for the innocent civilians of Ukraine and Russia.
Such terrible suffering. Such awful destruction and violence. So many put in harm’s way by history, or by greed, or by political maneuvering.
Shocking and painful
It’s all the more shocking and painful for me for two reasons. First, I was just in the Holy Land in the spring, the weeks just following Divine Mercy Sunday. I can imagine the terror and the heartbreak all too well; I have seen Jerusalem and walked her streets.
We flew into and out of Tel Aviv. I’ve passed through checkpoints, been to Palestinian territories to see Jericho and Bethlehem, and heard from native Christians about the issues that have just flared into open warfare so dramatically this past weekend. I have seen Jews and Gentiles in the markets, on the streets, in the towns side by side.
Second, I work for a religious congregation that was first founded by St. Stanislaus Papczynski (1631-1701) in what is today Poland. The Congregation was nearly wiped out by the oppression of the Tsarist empire, had several of its members martyred during the Cold War by Soviets, and suffered damage to its property in Ukraine during the present invasion.
The present conflict mirrors so many others that the Congregation has, by the grace of God and the protection of Mary Immaculate, survived.
So the daily news connects in a personal way for me. It makes the question all the more pressing: What, in the end, can we do?
Not the last resort
I know people are so sick and tired of empty words that whenever someone suggests prayer these days, they are tempted to scorn and scoff. And indeed, prayer has been abused by those who wanted to avoid having to act.
It’s an easy thing to promise someone that they’ll be in your prayers. It’s harder to fulfill your commitment. Harder still to abide in the patient perseverance that world-changing prayer can often require of us. Hard to watch and wait and pray seriously, to make prayer a habit and a way of life rather than a verbal shield to deflect having to think about tragedy or take action to prevent the next such tragedy.
Prayer is the foundation of all other efforts, though. Real prayer, honest prayer, persistent prayer makes possible the victory of goodness in the world because God is a gentleman; with divine generosity and courtesy, He never forces or compels a positive response from His creatures.
God is the source of free will because God is love and truth, and so will be pleased by nothing less than true love from persons made in His image and likeness. He will not make do with puppets always doing good, always completely obedient to His will, whether they want to be obedient or not.
Consequence of free will
The ultimate answer to the problem of evil in this world is free will. Evil is the consequence of free will being misused. The fall of the devil with his angels contributed to the fall of our first parents. Those falls set the stage for everything else — for human beings born with an inclination to evil; for physical illness and death; for a world at war with us, and neighbors turning on neighbors, and brothers stabbing each other in the back. Those falls disrupted the ordinary easy transparency of the created world to the light of Heaven.
By Christ’s coming, His self-sacrifice, the Sacraments, and grace, and prayer, the world once again invites in that light of Heaven. The sanctity of the saints leaves traces on the world around them — that’s why we have relics, and stories of extraordinary miracles, and works of mercy beyond what human nature alone can achieve.
It’s that same light of Heaven that we welcome into the world with our prayers, and when we offer up suffering. The light of Christ courses through the Body like sap from a Vine to the branches (see Jn 15:5), and wherever it’s allowed to shine out into the world, good things happen.
[M]any souls … are often worried because they do not have the material means with which to carry out an act of mercy. Yet spiritual mercy, which requires neither permissions nor storehouses, is much more meritorious and is within the grasp of every soul. If a soul does not exercise mercy somehow or other, it will not obtain My mercy on the day of judgment. Oh, if only souls knew how to gather eternal treasure for themselves, they would not be judged, for they would forestall My judgment with their mercy (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1317).
Path to peace
The path to peace has been laid out for us again and again across the last century, in the teachings of the popes and Vatican II, in the Catechism and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, and in apparitions to saints and mystics.
Continue to say the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, to obtain the peace of the world and the end of the war, because only she can obtain it — Our Lady at Fatima, Portugal, July 13, 1917.
And how would Our Lady obtain peace in the world? We can’t predict all the particular means Our Lady would use, but we do know the ultimate end of all her efforts: bringing us all back to Jesus, the Divine Mercy Incarnate.
Jesus said to St. Faustina:
Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My mercy (Diary, 300; see also 699).
We are, right now, in the month of the Rosary. A chapter of the Rosary Confraternity of St. Dominic has just been established at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy, with some extraordinary promises for membership. Please enroll!
The Rosary itself has some incredible promises attached to it. If you haven’t already decided to take it up this month, please let the terrible events of this past weekend be your encouragement.
Just 20 minutes a day
Please pray for peace. If you can, pray the Rosary every day for peace in the world. A well-prayed Rosary can be done in 20 minutes, as Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC, explains in his handy booklet How to Pray the Rosary. You can do so much good for so many souls with a daily Rosary for peace, even if you don’t see the direct fruits in your own life. And it will answer one of the calls of Jesus, relayed to us through St. Faustina:
I demand from you deeds of mercy, which are to arise out of love for Me. You are to show mercy to your neighbors always and everywhere. You must not shrink from this or try to excuse or absolve yourself from it. I am giving you three ways of exercising mercy toward your neighbor: the first — by deed, the second — by word, the third — by prayer. In these three degrees is contained the fullness of mercy, and it is an unquestionable proof of love for Me. By this means a soul glorifies and pays reverence to My mercy (Diary, 742).
Please pray for me that I might practice what I preach. I’ll pray for you.
Chris Sparks is the senior writer/editor for the Marian Fathers. He is the author of the Marian Press book How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question.
Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash
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