Prayer for World Peace
by Sister Joan Chittester, OSB
Great God, who has told us
"Vengeance is mine,"
save us from ourselves,
save us from the vengeance in our hearts
and the acid in our souls.
Save us from our desire to hurt as we have been hurt,
to punish as we have been punished,
to terrorize as we have been terrorized.
Give us the strength it takes
to listen rather than to judge,
to trust rather than to fear,
to try again and again
to make peace even when peace eludes us.
We ask, O God, for the grace
to be our best selves.
We ask for the vision
to be builders of the human community
rather than its destroyers.
We ask for the humility as a people
to understand the fears and hopes of other peoples.
We ask for the love it takes
to bequeath to the children of the world to come
more than the failures of our own making.
We ask for the heart it takes
to care for all the peoples
of Afghanistan and Iraq, of Palestine and Israel
as well as for ourselves.
~~
Read also
Some Prayers for Peace and Serenity
Prayers for Peace in Syria, Iraq, the Middle East
Tags: Middle East, Paris, #parisattacks, Syria, Iraq, terrorism, ISIL
This is all for now,
Cecilia
1 comment:
Babyruth Villarama-Gutierrez if it's any consolation to help process it (as I am too), I tried tracing back how we came to this. For a time, I wanted to get to the bottom who's responsible - perhaps the superpowers, who 30 years ago wanted to be ahead of the game and began funding rebel groups against leaders who do not adhere to their kind of democracy. Down the line, these directionless groups would believe in a change through violent means. They grew stronger, more powerful than what they were meant to do. The children of these rebels and victims of previous century-old wars also grew angrier.
Amidst these, someone is happy orchestrating things - because war is a business and Middle East is a mine of natural resources. Rich countries have put their chips on it. There's no backing out and religion, sadly religion, is unfairly used to propagate war. They truly want people to be divided, scared and angry. It was not the terrorists who killed those innocent souls. It was an ideology the terrorists themselves are willing to die with.
I realised that the blame game can only divide further and the only way to solve it is to keep championing the best of each other. History has proven that humanity prevail as governments and the rule of the world evolve. I say we equip each other of a future that we truly deserve for ourselves. Live a life with no regrets. Leave behind a legacy your next of kin can carry on. Speak. Create something to inspire courage and destroy hypocracy. No one will get out of this world alive anyway, so yeah Carpe Diem!
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