Our Broken World

Discouragement! The daily news makes it so easy to succumb to discouragement. What is worse is that we not only ‘hear’ but actually see what dreadful things have happened, the carnage and devastation.

Images are so powerful entering through our eyes, ‘the windows of our soul’ as St Matthew suggests (6:22-23). But everyone knows that discouragement is the tool of the devil and must be resisted.

What does a good person do in face of our broken world?

While it is wonderful and necessary to assist others in sharing one’s resources to alleviate the suffering of those afflicted by war and unnatural and natural disasters, I believe the most effective response is a more personal one:

first, to spend more time in prayer and reflection, being attentive to the wonderful truth that God is intimately present in every event, person, experience;

secondly, to seek the will of God for me to each of those events, persons, experiences. In other words, the personal response is to make an act of faith in the guidance of our loving, merciful, present God.

In St John’s Gospel Jesus prayed that we might all be one with Him, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. At every Mass we pray Jesus’s prayer for peace and unity: “and graciously grant (Your Church) peace and unity in accordance with Your will”.

God’s will for us is to be reconciled with our God, to be reconciled with our brothers and sister (especially the most marginalised), and to be reconciled to our home, the earth which sustains and nurtures us.

The greatest gift we can give to our God and to our broken world is to be the best person we possibly can be, to constantly strive to be open and faithful to our covenant with God, to be transparent and tender with our brothers and sisters, and to treat the world we live in with loving respect and care.

God our ever present loving Father wants us to be mentors of reconciliation to others, to be their ‘elders’ who show by example and word how to live and be God’s children.