Maureen is a formidable talent—though she doesn’t write with a heavy pen. She’s inclusive, holistic, relatable. In her Easter story, Maureen writes about the power of miracles and how they impact our spiritual lives. We think you’ll enjoy her writing and her perspective. And because she’s so intrepid, Maureen also wrote a new book for Franciscan Media, What Was Lost: Seeking Refuge in the Psalms, about how these biblical poems helped her weather life’s greatest storms.

We at Franciscan Media are thankful that she trusts us with her writing. And we at St. Anthony Messenger are thankful for you, our readers. We’re glad to be with you on the journey.

He’s built skyscrapers, fought fires, and led the nation’s largest Franciscan province. But what Father John O’Connor most treasures is his ministry as a parish priest.

Franciscan Father John O’Connor is truly a Renaissance man—he’s worked elbow to elbow with real estate tycoons in New York City, run the corporation-like province of a major religious order, landed on an aircraft carrier, and barely escaped death on his first call as a fire department chaplain.

Yet, when asked what has given him the most satisfaction during his 50-plus years as a Franciscan, his response is simple and direct: “I would say it is the ministry I do as a Franciscan priest. It is to be there for people at the best of times, at the most difficult of times, and all kinds of times in between—but especially to be there with them at the most difficult time.”

At 73, Father John is showing no signs of slowing down as he reflects on the rich experiences of his past and the challenges that lie ahead.

‘So You’re the Guy Who Wants to Be a Friar?’

Born October 7, 1947, in Brooklyn as one of six children, John O’Connor grew up in Queens and attended Catholic elementary and high schools in upstate New York.

He felt the call to the priesthood when he was a teenager. He paints an idyllic scene of a summer outing on a creek near his cousins’ farm in the Catskills, not far from the Franciscan seminary in Callicoon. One afternoon, the vocations director came up to him and asked, “So you’re the guy who wants to be a friar?” That encounter put the bug in his ear and “I’ve never regretted it,” he says.

He attended St. Joseph’s Seminary in Callicoon, which he likened to a military prep school with discipline and a strict schedule. “I’ve been in leadership since I was 19 years old in the Franciscans, and I credit the experience there for giving me the skills,” he says.

He went on to novitiate at St. Raphael in Lafayette, New Jersey. In 1968, Father John made his first profession of vows and entered the Franciscan seminary at Holy Name College in Washington, DC. He was ordained in 1973 for Holy Name Province, covering the East Coast.

Father John’s first assignment was at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, New York, as codirector, then director of campus ministry and pastor of the new St. Bonaventure University Parish. The classroom called to him from 1976 to 1982; he taught a popular course on marriage.

In his late 30s, Father John headed back to Washington as director of Holy Name College. “The challenge was severalfold: One was as a young man coming back and earning the respect of 55 friars, especially those who were my professors and my mentors, and second, I was asked to come up with a solution as to where the friars would move.” The college owned a large building next to the Franciscan monastery that was in disrepair. It would have cost too much to renovate, so his superiors in New York asked him to come up with some options.

The building was sold and the archdiocese offered the Franciscans St. Camillus Church in Silver Spring, Maryland, which they still staff today. Father John got to work building a new Franciscan seminary next to the church, which is now the house of formation for Franciscan postulants.

In 1991, he headed to the suburbs to serve as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church in Triangle, Virginia, just outside the gates of the Marine Corps base in Quantico. “After those years of internal work in formation, it was really a nice breath of fresh air to start working with laypeople in the parish,” he recalls.

Real Estate Mogul

While in Triangle, he was elected to the provincial administration council and appointed director of real estate. The friars owned five buildings in Midtown Manhattan on 31st Street between 6th and 7th Avenues that needed to be rehabbed, but it would cost several million dollars.

While looking for a new source of income for the province, Father John proposed that the buildings be demolished and a skyscraper be built on the land. His superiors were hesitant but allowed him to do a feasibility study that brought together engineers as well as zoning, demographic, and transportation experts. He asked this group to answer two questions by the end of two months: Is it feasible to build a skyscraper, and is now the time to do it?

“They came back and they were unanimous in saying yes and yes,” Father John recalls. But they cautioned him about his inexperience, so he assembled a team of experts to tutor him in everything from tax law to contractual law to construction law. The $300 million project, which took four years of negotiation and then two years of construction, was completed in 2007.

The 63-story building has three distinct uses: The first is for the friars, who own five floors for the provincial headquarters, meeting space, a chapel, dining room, library, and living space, including guest rooms. The first 11 floors on the 32nd Street side are owned by the American Cancer Society, which operates the Hope Lodge, a free residence for cancer patients.

The third use is 400-plus apartments with 20 percent designated for low-income residents. The Franciscans own their part of the building and a percentage of the apartments and underground parking, which generates income.

During the skyscraper project in 2005, Father John was elected provincial of the largest province of any order of religious in the United States, “a multimillion-dollar operation, and I was responsible financially for a lot of fairly sophisticated financial and personnel operations.

“Like with anybody in charge of a major diocese, the buck stops with you, with the provincial. I was the one who was expected to make the tough decisions, to do critical thinking,” he says. All of that came to an end after his term-limited nine years.

He needn’t have worried about being idle. Not long after, the head of the Franciscan order in Rome contacted him for help starting a financial development office. He still serves as executive assistant to the minister general for financial development. In 2016, Father John was asked to return to Triangle as a parish priest.

Firefighter Chaplain

Throughout his priesthood, Father John has had an avocation for the fire service, which he likens to his vocation to the religious life. “We’re about saving souls in ministry, and they’re there about saving souls, physical souls,” he says.

It started in 1974, when the local volunteer fire department in Allegany, New York, asked if he’d be their chaplain. He went through firefighter training, was certified as a New York State firefighter, and rose through the ranks to become assistant chief.

His first call was in February 1975. “It was a large restaurant and catering facility, and I was almost killed,” Father John recalls. “It was something like 5 below zero, and I was one of the first ones on the scene as the truck pulled up. We began to make entry on the first floor, and as we went to open the door, the second floor blew up on top of us. I looked up, and all I could see was fire and debris coming right toward me. So I jumped over a snowbank. I asked another firefighter next to me, ‘Is this what it’s like?’ And he said to me, ‘Father, I’ve been a firefighter for close to 30 years. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to getting killed.’ I said to myself, Oh my God, this is my first fire.”

But he went back for more.

Once, while he was an assistant chief of Allegany’s volunteer fire department, a terrible storm came through that area and the neighboring community of Olean. They’d only been at the firehouse for about 15 minutes when a call came in that city hall was on fire. “All I could think to myself is, If I blow this one, I’ll go down in history as the volunteer fire chief who let city hall burn to the ground,” recalls Father John. “When we got to city hall, there was indeed smoke, but fortunately it was just one of their large generators overheating, and we got it out right away.”

His fire service continued in Silver Spring, and upon his return to Triangle, the chief asked him to help start a chaplain service.

Father John now serves as chief of chaplains, holding the rank of battalion chief for the Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue. He’s also a reserve chaplain for the county’s police department.

Parish Priest

Father John’s commendations chronicle his years of service to the fire service, parish outreach, youth and social service programs—there’s even a key to the city of Olean, New York. After a conversation with a fellow guest at a wedding reception in Washington in 1990, he was invited to land on an aircraft carrier in a twin-engine prop plane and was catapulted off two days later.

Yet, when he looks back, what’s brought him the most satisfaction has been ministering to parishioners as a Franciscan priest. “To help them through the challenges that they are dealing with in life, to help them through such things as sudden death or death in general,” he says. “To be able to give a homily on a weekend and have someone come up to you later and say, ‘Your homily really touched me.’

“I think almost everybody in formation at some point should work and minister in a parish, even if it’s only for a year, ” Father John says. “When you work with people in the parish, you allow yourself to be touched by humanity from birth to death. It further humanizes you as an individual.”

When asked what retirement looks like for him as a Franciscan, he laughs and says, “Death.” He can retire at 75, but “they encourage us to keep going as long as we can.” One of his associates in Triangle is an 80-year-old friar who still works part-time.

Pope Francis is a role model for Franciscans. “Pope Francis is, for us, Franciscan. He’s really one of us in terms of his approach to ministry and to his own priesthood,” he says of the Jesuit pope. “Francis [of Assisi] didn’t want us to be different from the laypeople we are ministering to.”

In that work of ministry, Father John says nothing is as important to him as a painting that hangs in his rectory office and the story behind it. The pastel depicts a river with a dock and two boats tied to a slip with trees in the background.

Years ago, he visited a woman in the Eastern Shore of Maryland who was dying from cancer. Though she had drifted away from the faith, her family asked him to come see her. He heard her confession and while they were chatting, she told him she had something to give him so he would always remember her: the pastel, which she had painted. She came back to the Catholic faith and died some months later.

The painting, he says, represents what is most important to him as a Franciscan priest: “being a person who can bring people back to the Church, who can help people who are hurting, and can help them to know that no matter what happens in their life, their God loves them.”

The preacher’s fiery sermon was focused on how Christ’s resurrection validated the truth of his own beliefs. The Resurrection, for him, was the stamp of approval that Christians had it figured out. I couldn’t help but wonder if the emotion bursting forth around me was related more to the thrill of certainty than it was about the transforming power of the Resurrection.

Was I off base? Maybe. Was I cynical? Probably. At that time, I was beginning to confront the spiritual doubts I had carried, sometimes overwhelmed by bitterness and confusion. But I was also beginning to place a finger on something that has plagued Christianity: our tendency to commodify faith; for our Western values to pull the train of spiritual experience rather than the other way around. In a culture that elevates certainty, it was no surprise that one of the most transforming Christian theological cornerstones was used to boost one’s own rightness and righteousness. And that goes for our role in God’s creation.

I was reminded of this quote from Thomas Merton: “There are some men for whom a tree has no reality until they think of cutting it down, for whom an animal has no value until it enters the slaughterhouse, men who never look at anything until they decide to abuse it and who never even notice what they do not want to destroy.”

In the United States, we commodify just about everything in our drive for efficiency and profit. Unfortunately, that sometimes includes our theology and spirituality; something that, at its worst, can produce a type of Christian nationalism that warps the message of the humble, loving, self-sacrificing Christ on the cross.

Creation as Kin

This Earth Day, I find myself thinking again of the confusion I experienced on that Easter Sunday years ago. I wonder whether we, as Christians, are letting our Western values hijack our faith instead of inviting us deeper into introspection and prayer. When it comes to the care of our planet, it seems we adopt more of a dominion approach, which places humans at the center of creation. Not surprisingly, this often leads to dominating and commodifying.

As Pope Francis suggests in “Laudato Si‘,” we need to shift toward a stewardship approach, where humans are entrusted with God’s creation. We are encouraged to adopt a kinship approach, epitomized by St. Francis, where every facet of creation is brother, sister, or mother, where we awaken to an interconnectedness with all of creation. The COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing political, social, and racial divisions reveal our difficulty in trusting this interconnectedness.

We find ourselves in a Holy Saturday moment, in that space between Crucifixion and Resurrection, and the model we adopt moving forward might affect whether we discover an empty tomb. I have long associated the Resurrection with heaven, but this kind of spiritual bypassing can lead to suppressing the realities of Holy Saturday. Contemplative prayer invites us to co-create a heaven here, in our very midst, but that entails honestly evaluating the cultural values we have idolized with an Americanized theology.

St. Bonaventure wrote that creation is our “first book.” While my mind spins at the dawn of a new day, I’m finding that taking time on my morning walk to experience creation—to slow my rushing thoughts and open my senses to the city sounds, breakfast smells, scattering critters, and passing strangers—somehow brings me back to interconnectedness, to seeing creation as kin. Some days, the thoughts keep bursting over the meditative dam, but other days I am, in a sense, liberated from myself, which is to say that the grip of my cultural idols is loosened. I gain perspective as a member of creation. I am freed from the pressures of dominion.

To truly “care for our common home,” the subtitle of “Laudato Si‘,” we are encouraged to return to the source, existing in that empty, open space beneath our own projections and ambitions. As Pope Francis wrote, “The Spirit of God has filled the universe with possibilities, and, therefore, from the very heart of things, something new can always emerge.”

Maybe the Resurrection signifies the willingness to give something new a chance.

A New Vision for Creation

Lord, help us to partner with you in the renewal of this earth.
May we be emptied so that authentic hope might arise.
Help open our eyes to see how our own idols and cultural
values might be blurring our spiritual vision.
As we read your book of creation, help us see anew.
Amen.

“Praised be you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and directs us,
bringing forth all kinds of fruits and colored flowers and herbs.”
St. Francis of Assisi

When you ask people about St. Francis, one of the first things many mention is his love of creation. In his “Canticle of the Creatures,” he praises the holiness of the many elements of creation, including our earth. Given the state of our environment these days, though, we’re certainly not honoring that holiness.

In January of this year, however, we made a step toward once again embracing Mother Earth when, in one of his first acts in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order stating that the United States will be rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement.

The move, though very important, quickly became lost amid news stories and commentary on insurrection and impeachment. But on February 17, the reentry became official.

The United States first joined the agreement in December 2015 when President Barack Obama announced that the United States would partner with 189 other countries to find ways to combat climate change and adapt to its effects. The Vatican also signed on to the agreement.

The goal of the agreement is to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees, above preindustrial levels. Even though the agreement was signed in December 2015, the treaty only came into force in November 2016.

A Step Backward

In June 2017, however, the United States backed away from the agreement when President Donald Trump announced that he would withdraw the United States from the accord as soon as possible. The move was no surprise given that he had stated his intentions to do so even before being elected.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered the news via Twitter, stating: “Today we begin the formal process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. The United States is proud of our record as a world leader in reducing all emissions, fostering resilience, growing our economy, and ensuring energy for our citizens. Ours is a realistic and pragmatic model.”

During an address to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at its headquarters in Rome, Pope Francis responded to the move, saying, “We see consequences of climate change every day. Thanks to scientific knowledge, we know how we have to confront the problem, and the international community has also worked out the legal methods, such as the Paris Accord, which, sadly, some have abandoned.”

Luckily, the withdrawal was not immediate. According to the agreement, no country could give notice to leave until three years had passed from the date of ratification. Even then, a member state still had to serve a 12-month notice period to the United Nations. Those stipulations meant that, even though Trump had announced the departure, it would not take effect until after the November 2020 election, leaving the ultimate decision up to the new president.

Part of the Problem and Solution

There is an ancient Iroquois philosophy known as the seventh-generation principle, which states that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future. Given the state of the climate now, we are not buying into this philosophy.

Climate change is no longer a problem we can continue to kick down the road, bantering back and forth about whether it’s real or not. This is not a partisan issue. It’s a life issue with real-life implications. And, as the second highest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world (China is first), the United States needs to be part of the solution.

Last September, Pope Francis urged nations to fight global warming according to the climate accord, saying: “Our constant demand for growth and an endless cycle of production and consumption are exhausting the natural world. Forests are leached, topsoil erodes, fields fail, deserts advance, seas acidify, and storms intensify. Creation is groaning!”

When we focus on only the present moment, we’re losing sight of tomorrow. Rejoining the Paris Agreement is one step in the right direction.

Christ died on the cross so we may have help carrying our own.

She was young, attractive, athletic, dressed in spiffy, hot-pink tennis duds—and crying. As other members of her tennis team gathered around sympathetically, the woman explained that she was “too enmeshed” with her son, a bright boy who had serious problems with social and motor skills.

He was going off independently to school, and she groaned, “My whole life was taking care of him–because if I didn’t do it, he’d have chaos. I don’t know what I’ll do now!” She continued that she was also concerned about her mom, an elderly woman who lived far away and insisted on driving when she shouldn’t.

“What if she has an accident and kills or hurts someone?” the woman asked, tearfully. A classic case of the sandwich generation, I thought, trying not to be too obvious about eavesdropping.

The consolation from the others came swiftly:

“Well, at least you have tennis!”

“Oh, that’s my therapy,” replied the woman.

I’d never criticize another person’s coping mechanism, especially for one confronting such tough issues. But I secretly longed for this woman to participate in our parish celebration of Good Friday that evening. It might have soothed some of her pain, or at least put it into the context of Christ’s suffering. Many wise traditions know the importance of naming one’s loss or sorrow, since suppressing it only makes it worse. Buddhist monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh suggests cradling our broken hearts as tenderly as we would a sick and crying child.

In a particularly Catholic way, abstraction such as “suffering” is translated to tangible, visible word and gesture in the liturgy. Furthermore, it links our individual stories and struggles concretely, not just verbally, to the overarching story of Christ’s redemptive suffering.

My rule of thumb for Good Friday liturgy is this: when we do something only once a year, pay attention. So I focus on three parts of the service that move me especially.

The Presider’s Prostration

Liturgy, at its best, speaks through symbol or gesture, not needing many words to convey meaning. For instance, submersion in the waters of Baptism, lighting the Easter candle, or offering a cup of wine all speak eloquently without verbiage. The Good Friday service begins with a silent procession, and the presider prostrating himself before the altar. We see this action only once a year: What does it say?

Different people probably have different interpretations at different times of their lives. To me, it says, starkly, “We killed God.” Not to become morbid, but to some extent we are all guilty. We have killed that divine spark in each other, through a callous word, a harsh condemnation, a heavy hand.

The presider speaks for all of us as he lies face-down on the floor. “This, my friends, is what we’ve done to the finest human/divine being who ever lived.”

Words can’t touch the tragedy: symbolically, we all lie flat on our faces.

The Readings: Psalm 22

The first verbal nugget was the taunting line from the reading: “You relied on the LORD—let him deliver you; if he loves you, let him rescue you” (Ps 22:9). If God loves you?

Jesus, who began praying this psalm from the cross, must have suffered the ultimate abandonment: doubt that his Father—who had always been a source of joy and strength—loved him. Fully human, not just play-acting, he descended to the depths of human exile. Yet the psalms have a remarkable way of pirouetting from one emotion to another, often from depth to peak.

Kathy McGovern presents a positive interpretation in her blog “The Story and You.” After Jesus, in agony, calls out the beginning verse: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?,” some women “standing at a distance” respond, in synagogue style to his introduction by reciting the rest of it, all 31 verses, including the triumphant end, when the suffering one proclaims that ‘all will proclaim the Lord to generations still to come, his righteousness to a people yet unborn.’

“Jesus relies on ‘those standing at a distance’—and that’s us, too, isn’t it?—to finish the psalm for him, including lines that in the context of the crucifixion are a tribute to prayer under the worst conditions: ‘you who fear the Lord, praise him.'”

At some unspoken depth, Jesus knows that, ultimately, it all ends well, as God had planned.

The Passion of the Cross

The reading from the Passion according to John follows Jesus from his questioning by Annas, the high priest, to the praetorium where he is tried by Pontius Pilate. The time frame for most of Chapter 18 occurs at night.

After the Last Supper, Jesus goes to the garden in darkness. Judas comes with soldiers bearing lanterns and torches. They then bring him to the court of Annas. There, Peter’s denials occur by the charcoal fire; it is still night. But John 18:28 records, “it was morning.” That raises the question, where did Jesus spend the night?

Scripture scholar McGovern gives a fascinating talk about Holy Week, with slides taken in the Holy Land. One of her most vivid descriptions is of a dark, spidery, terrifying pit. Prisoners who’d been taken into custody were lowered into it by pulleys and kept chained there so they wouldn’t kill themselves before their trials. It is most likely, she concluded, that Jesus would have spent the night before his trial by Pilate in this dank dungeon.

The light of the world was plunged into terrible darkness and chained there. What were Jesus’ thoughts? Clearly, he wouldn’t have been able to sleep much. Did he pray? Did he console other prisoners? Did he remember his friends at their last meal together, or think of his mother? It’s an unrecorded part of the narrative. We can only imagine what happened.

But it might bring tremendous consolation for people trapped in various addictions, imprisoned, or victimized in the countless ways humans torture each other to know that Jesus endured what they do. He who was beauty, grace, freedom, and compassion was chained to a filthy wall. He who had never hurt anyone felt the raw bite of metal into his skin. He who had such clarity about his mission did not know what horror the morning might bring. He entered deeply into the worst of being human.

Veneration of the Cross

People seemed drawn to the crucifix: to touch it lightly, cling to a hand, or kiss the feet. What is the compelling power of this instrument of death, used by Romans over 2,000 years ago? As our pastor pointed out, it’s not the cross; it’s the corpus. To simply revere the cross would be like honoring Martin Luther King Jr. by hanging up an assault rifle.

Father Richard Rohr describes the corpus in Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent: “Jesus’ body is a standing icon of what humanity is doing and what God suffers ‘with,’ ‘in,’ and ‘through’ us. It is an icon of utter divine solidarity with our pain and our problems.”

Each person who approached it that evening bore some kind of sorrow. And they were only a few, representing millions more outside our church. Scratch the surface of any group and you’ll find the tragedies. In a family, a staff, or a work site, the stories of suffering run deep. Add in the veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan, the physical and mental aftermaths of war and the ripple effect on their families—an immense tide of suffering crashed at the foot of the crucifix.

Those who venerated the cross came close to the crucified Jesus to find meaning in their own burdens. Connecting their pain to his meant that they didn’t suffer alone. Wave after wave of people in vast variety approached: the lovely couple whose daughter died last year in a freak accident; the vulnerable elderly who could barely bend to touch it; a woman battling cancer; the wife of an Iraq veteran addicted to painkillers; an obese woman whose childhood hungers still drove her to eat, jeopardizing her health.

The children were especially touching, quietly extending their thin arms, and perhaps whispering, “I’m sorry, Jesus, that you had to die like this.” Knowing his magnificent courtesy, Jesus would somehow touch those who touched his cross.

I wondered about the tennis player I’d seen that morning. Would it help her to be part of this movement toward a God who suffered? Would she feel an affinity to the Christ whose first words to Mary Magdalene did not trumpet his resurrection, but probed her sorrow: “Woman, why are you weeping?” (Jn 20:15). Participating in the liturgy wouldn’t end the lady’s suffering. But it would give her the support of a suffering God, and companions who endure and seek to transform their pain.

Praying the rosary to find strength and support is common. This man prays the rosary for an end to racism.

“Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.'”—Matthew 16:24-25

I wasn’t always a rosary person. But now, the rosary bookends my day. Every morning when I run, I am praying the rosary. Every evening (well, most of the time), I pray the rosary with my wife, Lynne. And sometimes I throw in an extra decade or two somewhere during the day. But, despite all of this, I still think of myself as an amateur. You see, I came to it out of desperation—and without any training.

Early in our time as parents, almost 30 years ago, I discovered that I had no idea what I was doing or how I could keep doing it. Postpartum depression seemed to hover over our family. Our daughters struggled to sleep at night, and poor Lynne suffered. In order for her to get any rest, I would take the crying child out in a stroller and walk the neighborhood streets at 1 or 2 or 4 in the morning, walking and singing lullabies and then, after I’d run out of songs, praying even. The only prayers I knew were the Our Father and the Hail Mary. So I prayed them. Over and over. I’m pretty sure I had never prayed an actual rosary before. Heck, I didn’t even own one. And I certainly didn’t know the mysteries or that any other prayers were involved—or how many! But I was desperate. So, I prayed.

At first, I just made up my own mysteries. Since my knowledge of Jesus consisted mainly of Christmas and Easter, there was usually some mixture of birth and death, Nativity and cross. They were mysteries of desperation and longing; later I would discover that most of them fit into what are traditionally called the sorrowful mysteries.

A New Priority

My daughters are now in their 20s, so I have a long history of making up my own variations and meditations for this very traditional devotion. And recently my meditations have taken a new turn, shaped by a new desperation. With the seemingly constant headlines about young black men and women being killed by the police, and the constant reports of protest marches and counter-protesters, I knew I needed help. I couldn’t make sense of this on my own.

So again, I brought my anxiety, my fears, my confusion, and laid them at the foot of the cross and asked Mary to help me. And so, perhaps inspired by her, I began praying the sorrowful mysteries for an end to racism.

When I pray the sorrowful mysteries, every Tuesday and Friday morning, I pray special intentions for all those who suffer under the weight of racism and bigotry. As Christians we definitely need& to pray for healing and forgiveness from this sin. We need to be praying daily that, if it is possible, God will take this cup away from us. Until I figure out something better, this is one thing I know I can do to help heal our country and to heal my own heart.

The five sorrowful mysteries recall events from Christ’s passion, and to meditate on the pain and suffering he endured is quite fitting for this purpose. Here is how I pray for an end to racism.

1. The Agony in the Garden. Are we not living in a garden of plenty—especially here in the United States, this land of abundance to the point of waste? And yet so many of our brothers and sisters live in want and desperation, in an agony of poverty, fear, and anxiety-—always afraid of who might knock at their door, stop them on the street, question them in a store.

I pray for all those who feel the anxiety and dread of the suspicious eye, the distrustful glance, the fearful gaze of a clerk in a store, a police officer driving by, or a stranger crossing the street, always reminding you that you don’t fully belong. I pray for those who never feel fully welcome in this garden we call home.

2. The Scourging at the Pillar. The scourge of racism, prejudice, and bigotry is physical, psychological, and emotional. The constant slights and dismissals are a true scourge perpetrated by a society that refuses to see you as anything but the “other” and refuses to recognize your God-given value.

Even more frightful, though, are the physical abuses: the unnecessary restraints and beatings by those with sanctioned power and authority. Abuses by police, security guards, and hate groups evoke a long and horrifying history of lynch mobs and the slave master’s whip. I pray for those who suffer the oppressive scourge of the physical and emotional abuse of racism.

3. The Crown of Thorns. In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois famously wrote of the feeling of being seen not as a person but as a problem. He describes how this affects a person’s self-image and how one can begin to measure worth by the standards society imposes. What is it like to live under constant suspicion, to live with the knowledge that much of your world sees you only as “other,” as a threat, or, at best, as a problem to be dealt with?

Constant self-doubt and self-recrimination are nothing less than a psychological crown of thorns. It is a persistent, painful, nagging sensation—a reminder that something is wrong, that there is a problem, and that the problem is you. This is the message that the world has always given to the victim, the “other,” the scapegoat. This crown of thorns leaves its marks far more than skin-deep. I pray for those forced to wear it, those crowned with fear, anxiety, self-doubt, and suspicion.

4. Carrying the Cross. The cross of racism—the crushing weight of prejudice and the burden of bigotry—is borne by the victim who stumbles exhausted under its crushing weight. Society, cultural norms, and fear and anxiety about differences put it so easily upon the shoulders of the “other.” For some of us, it may be completely unconscious: We don’t know we are doing it and don’t intend any harm. We are following cultural rules, doing what someone said was right. We just don’t know how to be different or realize there is a problem.

We are like the Roman guards, simply following orders, traditions, habits. Or maybe we are more like the crowd in the streets of ancient Jerusalem: We watch the spectacle as it passes, looking on for a moment, but then go back to our own worries. Yes, it looks terrible, that poor man carrying that cross, but we don’t know what to do. Anyway, it’s none of our business; it doesn’t really affect us. And those in charge must know what they are doing. Our leaders wouldn’t just crucify a man for no reason.

But in my prayer I ask myself: Why don’t we see the Lord in this moment? Why don’t we see the face of Christ in the victim of racism? In George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, or Eric Garner?

Christ was a victim too. He was accused of criminal behavior. Were his abuse and death not sanctioned by those in authority? Was he not hung between two thieves?

In our prayer, let us look at the victim crushed by the cross of racism and bigotry and ask ourselves: Who do we see? Whose bruised and scourged face do I see? And, instead of turning away, let us stop and help, like Simon of Cyrene. Let us not be afraid to pick up that cross and follow wherever God leads. Because the cross of racism crushes all of us.

5. The Crucifixion. The death of Christ on the cross was a sacrifice for the sins of the world. And yet how do we repay Our Lord when we treat our brothers and sisters not as fellow beloved children of God, but as something less? We make a mockery of his gift, of his death. We repay his sacrifice with sin. The victims of racism are crucified with Christ every day in little and big ways, crucified by injustice, crucified by cruel words or unfair treatment. And too often we are complicit by our consent or willful ignorance.

If we claim to revere the cross, if we claim to love the one who died for our sins, then we must not turn away. We must always walk toward it—toward the outcast, toward the victim, toward the abused and the marginalized. Because, as Christ himself told us, that is where we will find him. That is where we are called to follow.

Every day, we are called to go to the cross, to seek it wherever we find ourselves, and to bear witness there—at the foot of the cross—to the one who loved us enough that he died for us. We must understand that he laid down his life for all of us. To bear witness to his sacrifice, to his life, to his love.

A Continuous Support

There is a long history of praying the rosary for a variety of causes. Many people have prayed for peace, for life, for healing, even for victory in battle. Let us never tire of turning to Mary and this most powerful prayer, asking always for healing from the sin of racism, for victory over our own weakness and prejudices (conscious or unconscious), for peace in our hearts and in our nation, and for life in a world free from bigotry.

As I walk in the quiet of the morning, my rosary in hand, my prayer is that I will have the courage to go toward the cross of racism wherever I see it and to stand with the crucified wherever I find them and say to the world: “No more! This is my brother. This is my sister. And this must stop. Now.”

Isaiah 53:4-5 reads, “Yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he was carrying, while we thought of him as someone punished, struck down with affliction by God; whereas he was being wounded . . . crushed because of our guilt.”

Prayer to Overcome Racism

Lord, help us.
We are in turmoil.
The sin of racism continues to plague our nation and world.
George, Ahmaud, Breonna—and so many others who now rest in your arms—serve as a witness to both what we have done and what we have failed to do.
We mourn while we struggle for answers.
We turn to you for direction so that we can escape this dark place of hatred.
For far too long, many of your children have cried out for your help, feeling forgotten, abandoned.
Help them remember that you are there, walking with them in their struggles, leading them toward the light of equality.
Amen.