Ukraine
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
Matthew 5:8-9
These words were read at the beginning of the final time of prayer during a two-hour Zoom call led by two regional leaders of a global Christian meditation ministry who live in Lviv, Ukraine. I have followed this ministry for decades and learned this online gathering would originate from Ukraine late in March. Because of the time difference, I had not planned to join the Zoom call, but in waking up that Saturday morning earlier than I had hoped, I got online in time to hear a talk on peace given by a Christian meditator, a former leader of the European Council. At the end of his talk, the ministry’s leader, Father Laurence Freeman, introduced other regional leaders who shared their experience of living a life of prayer in a society that had been, or currently is, dangerous and volatile. These leaders covered the globe, being from South Africa, Venezuela, Northern Ireland and Hong Kong. All spoke about the gift of prayer and meditation when living with uncertainty, hardship, and violence.
Throughout all these talks, people from every corner of our world were adding encouraging words in the “Chat,” identifying where they were from and that their prayers were with Ukraine. Our Zoom hosts, Maria and Albert, then led more than one thousand people online into a worldwide 20 minutes of silent prayer and meditation beginning with these two Beatitudes.
As I write this Daily Word in the waning days of Lent, I will confess I have been struggling with the images coming to us from Ukraine each day. My fervent hope and prayer is that this war will have come to an end by the time this Daily Word is published on Easter Week. Born in the last few years of the “Baby Boom,” it has been unnerving for me to see the resuscitation of the Soviet Union, a body politic I had assumed would stay dead and buried.
Although it is a natural human emotion, fear sustained over time is not healthy. And so I, over and over and over again these past few months, have deployed the spiritual practice of surrender and “letting go,” placing myself and my world in God’s hands, letting our Lord know my trust is in Him, and that I am willing to dwell in this time of insecurity knowing I am held in the arms of the Almighty God. After all, to quote the late John Paul II, “We are Easter people, and alleluia is our song.”
Resurrection and new life always come…that’s the promise of Easter. How might we live today as if “alleluia is our song?” For if we could, we would be the pure in heart, the peacemakers.
