Nowadays, news posts and broadcasts often give us bleak news due to the coronavirus outbreak: healthcare workers overwhelmed by the surging number of COVID-19 patients, family breadwinners who have lost their jobs or unable to work because of the lockdown, young people who can’t go to school because either they or the schools are not equipped for online learning. All this uncertainty and desperation can bring us down or give rise to a more caring heart. In the following prayer, the heart of Chiara Lubich goes out to all those who suffer. Like her, may we also be that concrete expression of the love of God who cannot remain indifferent to the pains and sorrows of the world.
Lord, give me all who are lonely… I have felt in my heart the passion that fills your heart for all the forsakenness in which the whole world is drifting.
I love every being that is sick and alone.
Even the suffering of plants causes me pain… even the animals that are alone.
Who consoles their weeping?
Who mourns their slow death?
And who clasps to their own heart, the heart in despair?
My God, let me be in this world the tangible sacrament of your Love, of your being Love: let me be your arms that press to themselves and consume in love all the loneliness of the world.
Chiara Lubich
September 1, 1949
(Essential Writings, New City Press, New York 2007, pp. 81-82)
