What do we do?

In times like this, we turn on the news. The media are at their best in times of disaster and tragedy. This is certainly a tragedy.

What else do we do? Even the news media, even the hardened members among them, tend to wrap up interviews with the expression that ‘certainly, our prayers are with them and their families.’

We pray. We must pray.

I have been making an effort lately to follow a promise to pray for someone with an immediate prayer, knowing how easy it is to have the good intention, but to put it in the ‘to do’ column, for next time I’m at Mass, or doing Liturgy of the Hours, or Rosary, or something like that.

Here are a few to contemplate right now, if it helps.

And this one, attributed mostly to St. Francis.

Peace Prayer*

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen