Praying for our Troubled World
Pope Francis believes that the call to a prayerful concern for our troubled world, to a conversion of our lives to save our Mother-Earth, is much more than an added-on obligation. It is a knowing in the heart, a recognising of our wider family of origin and destiny, an awakening of the divine imagination already within the human psyche. Our hearts, fashioned lovingly in the divine image, somehow sense this astonishing revelation of our intimacy with the earth, and our responsibility for saving her life and the lives of those whose plight is increasingly desperate.
Our prayers are powerful when they grow from the way we see and understand the mystery of creation and incarnation. The Pope is trying to help us hold the suffering poor in a ravaged world as the greatest concern of God and of us. He wants us to live and love in that non-negotiable perception. Like the artist who looks at the block of marble and sees the hidden angel, like the farmer who looks at his winter fields and sees the waving harvest, like the mystic who looks at the caterpillar and sees the butterfly, like the midwife who looks at the pregnant woman and sees a beautiful baby, like Jesus who looked into the hearts of sinners and saw their grace, so too we are called to look at our beloved, broken and beautiful world and see the weeping face of Jesus.
Beyond a passing sympathy we now surrender to the deepest empathy, seeing our earth and its broken-hearted family from the inside, experiencing it as we experience ourselves. We are urged to get utterly involved in a full commitment and to do everything possible to transform Christian and universal consciousness before it is too late. In ‘praying our troubled world’ we do not stay on our knees. We need to remember in our active contemplation that Resurrection has happened. And Resurrection is about more than a miraculous moment for the crucified body of Jesus. It is the final stage of creation and Incarnation for the crucified world.
(Horizons of Hope – Page 38)