Prayer:
My Lord and my God, Jesus Christ, You have called us tonight to gather in Your name, with hearts full of trust that want to express great faith in You, and perhaps also a little reproach over unanswered prayers and over the divine silence that leaves us with no sign of the times and no comforter to bring us security and peace. Perhaps we feel what You felt when You cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Why do You leave us in this time of weapons, slaughter, displacement, injustice, hunger and disease? Our souls too are sorrowful even unto death. We too ask You to take this cup away from us. The hard circumstances of life make us sweat blood, and the price of our faith in You sometimes feels far beyond our ability to pay the bill. And we ask ourselves, and ask You, with the reproach of sons and daughters and the hope of penitents: why must a new Job and a new torment be repeated in each one of us? Why can suffering sow in us tears that You promised to wipe away, when You promised that no one could take our joy from us? How many people, like Job, have cursed the day they were born? How many young people have given in to despair, found no meaning or taste in life, and decided to end it? And the biggest question remains: why are the wicked able to do all this evil and go on living? “Why do the wicked live?” We repeat Job’s cry: “Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? … Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them.” Our complaint is Job’s, and it is bitter; many fall into doubt, and we lose the answers for those who ask us about You. “Where is your God?” they ask, to confuse us and tell us: “Your faith is in vain.” And how many of our children have become ashamed and prefer to give up because their weapons are weak? They feel that You are far away, even absent, and that evil rules and triumphs. We tell them: “Do not be afraid. God is with you.” And they answer us like Gideon, to whom the angel of the Lord appeared and said: “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor.” And Gideon said to him, “Pray, sir, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this befallen us? And where are all his wonderful deeds which our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian.” (Judges 6). And today we feel abandoned among a thousand hands of those who rule this earth and control people’s destinies. And like the prophet Jeremiah, tonight we open our hearts and consciences to You, we pour out our complaint before You and say: “Righteous are you, O LORD, when I complain to you; yet I would plead my case before you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (Jeremiah 12)
But our hope, Lord, still lies on the side of the light, and the darkness has not been able to put out our faith or steal our lamp. Like Saint Charbel, it still tells us that we can light our lamp with water, because You are in our hearts whispering words of life, and because the Spirit still comforts and strengthens us. No doubt can break us or destroy us, for the seal of Your holy gifts strengthens our weakness and assures us that our relationship with You is not governed by logical calculations or human ways. We will not discover You through philosophy or understand You through logic; but Your love for us, revealed in Jesus Christ, is our new logic and our sure understanding. We know You as far as You reveal Yourself to us, and Your generosity toward us has no limits. Because You loved us, we live in the security of love; and because You redeemed us with Your precious Blood, when You were nailed to the Cross and pierced with the spear, immortality poured out for us and You gave us eternal life. How could we ever forget that You taught us by example and became a man like us in everything but sin, that You suffered and died and conquered death by the resurrection, so that we too, in the likeness of Your death and resurrection, might be renewed for everlasting life? With You it is impossible to sow wheat and reap thorns, for You are faithful to Your promises and Your judgments are justice and uprightness. And as Saint Augustine said to You, we say to You too: our hearts will find no rest except in You, O God. With You the journey is certain: it is neither an adventure nor a gamble with the resources of life You planted in us. With You there is nothing we cannot understand, and doubt cannot become a creed; instead You hold us by the hand in certainty and trust. How could a child resting in its parents’ arms be troubled by fear? And who can sense, feel and love their parents before understanding them as much as children do? So it is with You, Lord: we are children who find our true selves and discover our will in You; we have come to see that You dwell in us more deeply than we dwell in ourselves, and that the evil in us comes from our freedom to choose: it is simply the good we did not choose, and even rejected. United with You, there is no longer any room for evil, failure or falling, and the darkness of doubt and anxiety has no more power over our souls, which thirst for knowledge and truth. Without You, Lord, we are without will and without self, without name and without identity, for we come from You; and if we doubt You, it is ourselves we are doubting. You, Lord, are the truth of truths; our reason is forever searching and seeks faith, and our faith seeks reason. Give us, Lord, first the gift of faith, so that when we believe, our faith may be reasonable. And grant that tonight we may discover a part of the truth, which is You.
Amen.
Bishop Ibrahim Ibrahim
