March 15, 2022
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Modern technology provides instant and vivid depictions of every event happening throughout the world. The recent war in the Ukraine has been extremely disturbing and unsettling. We live in a world where the effects of war are presented to us in living color every night. It’s not a video game where worlds are destroyed, and people killed or injured, and then someone hits a reset button and everything returns to normal. This is reality – people die, individuals are injured, families are separated, children cry from hunger, towns and cities destroyed.
There is truth to the statement that “war is hell.” It presents the worst of humanity. However, there is a presentation of courage that is at the heart of the best of us. The determination to be free at the cost of one’s life. The willingness to sacrifice possessions to contribute to the resistance, to stand in the face of insurmountable odds, to declare loyalty to the nation.
We all feel helpless in this struggle. Yet, it is faith that allows us to support the freedom and righteousness of a people through our prayers. Prayers do make a difference, and it is the many prayers of the people of the Ukraine, joined to the prayers of the people throughout the world, that allows us to place our trust in the one Lord who can bring peace to these troubled times. We pray also for the Russian people, who I believe do not want war but instead seek the diplomatic avenues necessary for peace.
The Ukrainian War is asking a very important question: do we have the resolve to protect the freedoms that we enjoy as a people? There were lives, blood and sacrifice given in the defense of the country. As a nation, we were fashioned through the bravery of the men and women who understood the cost of freedom. We enjoy today freedoms because they sacrificed. Every age must make a conscious choice to preserve the way of life that has been gifted to us and the identity we share as a nation.
I have often said that our Founding Fathers gave us a gift. They established our rights not by human contract but rather through inalienable rights given by God. The first right they recognized was the freedom of religion. We are called to understand that we all have a responsibility greater than allegiance to our society – we have a responsibility before God.
Perhaps at this time our prayers can be focused on the conversion of the leaders of the aggressive actions which endanger the peace and well-being of millions.
Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
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.
As instruments of peace, we do so as we LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
Sincerely,
Most Reverend Jerome E. Listecki
Archbishop of Milwaukee
