Jan 5: Out of Death, Life

Katsushika Hokusai: The Great Wave of Kanagawa
The Japan Ukiyo-e Museum, Matsumoto City, 1827

Memorial of Saint John Neumann, bishop

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 72:1-2, 10, 12-13

For he delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy (NRSV, Ps 72:12-13).

Father, of all of the gifts of the natural order which you share with us, water is among the more precious. Water gives life. It cleanses. It provides means of transportation and recreation. Water is fun. But it is also threatening. Water rots and decays. It encourages disease. It can bring death. Water then signifies both death and life. That is why water is the sacrament of our initiation into your divine life: down into the water to die to sin and selfishness; up out of the water to new life in you, our God.

Father, in the memory of your people, it is out of water that you have so many times brought them forth from death to life. In the beginning we read that your Spirit rested on the waters of chaos and created from them the heavens and the earth. The Book of Genesis also tells us that you brought Noah and his family through the horrors of the deluge to create for them and us a new earth. Your children remember how, when they were enslaved in Egypt, you brought them through the waters of the sea to freedom and then finally you called them through the river Jordan into the land to which they looked.

Once again, Father, your children suffer from an earth that seems to have grown angry and has unleashed tremendous surges of ocean water against them. The numbers of the dead are too high to count as are those who suffer physical injury and the loss of loved ones.

Father, in every situation, whether it be calm or tempestuous, there is one gift that you always share with us, the gift of your life. May peoples around the world accept that gift now with grateful hearts. May it strengthen those who have suffered the loss of loved ones or who have incurred serious physical injury. May it enlighten the rest of us to come to the assistance of those so desperately in need with all of our resources, our time and talents, our money and material goods, but especially with our love and consolation that no one anywhere need ever feel alone and abandoned.

Father, empower us all that we may emerge from these waters of destruction, born again out of them to forge ahead together to create a world where justice and loving concern vanquish violence and oppression.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.