This past week I watched an intensive TV series titled: Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror. The episodes have been reviewed as "unflinching" (unafraid). Maybe you can remember the nightly news during the Vietnam War — camera crews in the forests and fields of war, the flag-draped caskets being unloaded from carrier planes back here at home. That was unflinching. But it stopped after Vietnam; it upset too many people. Now we have finished another war. A long war of twenty years. I've talked with people who have not known we were fighting this war in Afghanistan. I've wondered if they could find that country on a map.
When the many TV episodes were over it dawned on me that in the course of my lifetime I have seen countless pictures of priests blessing soldiers in formation, bombs, tanks, submarines, rockets, and every kind of gun, but I've never heard a prayer of reparation for the terribleness of war. When a war is over, we want to "move on" as if it never happened. We never see the shattered veterans. We just accept it as, "That's the way it is." Sinful, evil things happen during wars. A pacifist (the Catholic Church is not a pacifist church) would say, war itself is evil and sinful. Catholics might dicker with what's called "Just War" — but that's increasingly looked upon as a kind of playing with words.
The only prayer I've seen that comes near a prayer of reparation for war is the prayer posted in the ruins of the gothic cathedral at Coventry, England, which was bombed to bits the night of November 14/15, 1940.
When we were ramping up for war with Iraq, Pope John Paul II said, "War is not always inevitable, it is always a defeat for humanity." Pope Francis has said, "War is madness, it is the suicide of humanity." Franklyn Delano Roosevelt said, "War is, after all, young men dying and old men talking." What sad statements.
So here's my own prayer of reparation for wars. It is "unflinching," like the Netflix documentary. If you don't like the sound of that, of course, you can switch to another channel. No judgment or hard feelings. On the other hand, if you want to join me — please do. "Blessed are the peacemakers," Jesus said. I'd suggest integral to peacemaking is repentance. And Fyodor Dostoyevsky prayed: "Christ, you have come to disturb us." This prayer, asking for forgiveness, might disturb.
The waste,
leadership deception and spin,
machismo,
power grabs,
child horror; child death,
God, whose inner life is community, forgive.
The false victory claims,
false glory,
death of young soldiers on every side,
sorrowing,
mutilations and bleed outs,
Father of infinite imagination, forgive.
The ignorance,
sex abuse,
shaming,
weeping in smoke,
hopelessness and depression,
God, who begins creation with light, forgive.
The family disintegration,
dead mothers and fathers,
manipulations,
earth turned to dust,
intrusions and lawlessness,
Christ, who speaks of himself as life, forgive.
The hasty decisions of raw emotion,
miscalculations,
stupidity,
outrages,
false promises and contradictions,
Christ, who knows the lily and the sparrow, forgive.
The coverups,
theft,
profiteering,
emotional death,
forest flame and silent birds,
Christ, who has descended to our underworld, forgive.
The torture,
ruins,
starvation,
exhaustion,
posturing and the disappearance of animals,
Spirit, who rides on Christ's breath of peace, forgive.
The ocean graveyards,
scorched earth,
defoliations,
burned flesh,
executions,
refugees and genocide,
Spirit, whose flame is love, forgive.
Jesus,
heaven-sent,
heart-shining,
who welcomed mothers and their little children,
who reverenced soil and seed,
trees, plants and birds,
who said, "Put away the sword,"
whose angel sat on the headstone,
who gathers the frightened in Easter peace,
forgive the sins of the
warring we seem
unable to stop.
Given the
creative intelligence
to cure diseases,
to send telescopes
into space unimagined,
even to land on moon and Mars
awaken in us that creativity
to head off wars —
that we might use every
resource and energy to
build up here on earth
your kingdom of
justice, love and peace. Amen.
