Profiles in Catholicism

Prayers

A prayer for Catholic mental health providers

In the heart of the dark, stealing through what is hidden, are the

Worms which empty the potato, leaving it like a brittle egg-shell.

Or the larvae in the soil, rising in the night to strike, ever so gently,

The fledgling plant, eating the leaves, holing its embrace on life.

Or the cold, descending frost, biting into the buds and blunting the tip

That would reach upwards and grow towards the light-increasing-life.

A face disfigured: “Darkness was over the face of the deep” (Gn 1: 2)

Glamour is no protection against the poisonous suggestion,

insinuating further in as it works its way through restless resistance.

Popularity bursts, leaving bruised and battered the people who once

Were icons of success, scattering what was good like crashed glass.

Good works: What were they? Who did them? Who can remember?

Subsiding like the passing of a great whale, where no trace remains.

Together Mary, the Mother of the Lord and Mary Magdalene, and

Others, too, were with John the Evangelist in your presence, Lord,

While you endured the cross, not flinching from their place of pain,

But bearing it too, in the heart’s hearth, kindling a love between us

More like a love from Love, wherein we transcend our differences in

Being still and becoming one, communicating what we can, when we

Can, through your very Presence in the impossible places of pain,

Bearing witness, in word and sacrament, that in being there you are

With us, whether on a cross or accompanying those who are – we are

Together tethered in prayer, touched by the touch of your word.

Oh Lord of Love, your undying Love lights, again and again, our

Flickering failing, near fatal inaccessibility but, as with the closed

Room, you can pass through to the innermost depths of our dying

Spirit and, like a fire leaping up with the flame that lights it, your

Presence among us takes us out of our isolation and estrangement.

Open to us, again and again, the contact of communication with

Communion: to that coming together in the solidarity of suffering that

Rises to the promise of the resurrection, whether in this life or the life

Eternal to come, restoring as it redeems our ruined relationships and

Expands our horizons to the hope of eternal glory and the needy other.

So, Lord, let all who come to help, bring all their expertise and

Training, experience and know-how, whether on their own or in the Company of

others, turning again to the great companionship of the One who has been

through the searing, tearing of soul from body and Everything that torments

and foments division, finding forgiveness to Be the answer that unbinds and

unfurls the biting sins and binds us

Through gifts of grace, like many chords of a song of praise, rising,

As we rise, to the praise of your redeeming Love, turning us to hope.

Oh Lord, let your Holy word so permeate our spirit that, uncovering

What needs healing, heeding what needs helping, helping what needs

Help to recover from the disintegrating, embittering lie of being

Unloved. unwanted, unable to come back into the community we left.

“And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness

Over the whole land until the ninth hour” (Mk 15: 33).

“And the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (Gn 1: 2).

And so let the Holy Spirit inspire our understanding of the “other”

That we may find a path to the problems that beset us and, in time,

Upload the soothing relief of being released to live, love and be more.

May the Mother of the Lord, Mary Magdalene. St. John and all the

Angels and saints, in all their diverse array, help us to see, to believe

And to benefit from the immense wealth of wisdom in the

Tradition And Magisterial teaching of the Church of Jesus Christ.

And may the depths from which we come, oh Lord, help us to

Communicate with those still immersed in the recesses of hurt,

Hurting too much to talk, too silent to speak, too unheard to be heard

Easily, that the new beginning be not a false, faked start, but a reality

Too hoped for to be anything but solidly real, wonderful and graced.

by Francis Etheredge, Catholic married layman, father, and author: