EQUAL TIME: Cardinal Dolan’s Prayer at the Democratic National Convention

September 8, 2012 By 4 Comments


Last week, I posted Cardinal Dolan’s prayer at the Republican National Convention in its entirety.

It seemed an omission, then, not to post his prayer at the conclusion of the Democratic Convention, as well.  Although it’s been posted on-line in several places, including on Cardinal Dolan’s own blog, I am pleased to do my part to spread the word:  At the convention which has been dubbed the “abortion-palooza” for its flagrant celebration of abortion rights, Cardinal Dolan again offered an unapologetic defense of Life.  He defended the elderly; he defended religious liberty; he defended natural law.

At this point, I’d guess it’s President Obama—not Cardinal Dolan—who’s feeling a little hot under the collar, in anticipation of the controversial Al Smith Dinner.

Oh, don’t let me bother you with a lengthy explanation.  Instead, savor the Cardinal’s courageous words.

CARDINAL DOLAN’S PRAYER

AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONFERENCE

With a “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence,” let us close this convention by praying for this land that we so cherish and love:

Let us Pray.

Almighty God, father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, revealed to us so powerfully in your Son, Jesus Christ, we thank you for showering your blessings upon this our beloved nation.  Bless all here present, and all across this great land, who work hard for the day when a greater portion of your justice, and a more ample measure of your care for the poor and suffering, may prevail in these United States.  Help us to see that a society’s greatness is found above all in the respect it shows for the weakest and neediest among us.

We beseech you, almighty God, to shed your grace on this noble experiment in ordered liberty, which began with the confident assertion of inalienable rights bestowed upon us by you:  life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thus do we praise you for the gift of life.  Grant us the courage to defend it, life, without which no other rights are secure.  We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected.  Strengthen our sick and our elders waiting to see your holy face at life’s end, that they may be accompanied by true compassion and cherished with the dignity due those who are infirm and fragile.

We praise and thank you for the gift of liberty.  May this land of the free never lack those brave enough to defend our basic freedoms.  Renew in all our people a profound respect for religious liberty:  the first, most cherished freedom bequeathed upon us at our Founding. May our liberty be in harmony with truth; freedom ordered in goodness and justice.  Help us live our freedom in faith, hope, and love.  Make us ever-grateful for those who, for over two centuries, have given their lives in freedom’s defense; we commend their noble souls to your eternal care, as even now we beg the protection of your mighty arm upon our men and women in uniform.

We praise and thank you for granting us the life and the liberty by which we can pursue happiness.  Show us anew that happiness is found only in respecting the laws of nature and of nature’s God.  Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community.  May we welcome those who yearn to breathe free and to pursue happiness in this land of freedom, adding their gifts to those whose families have lived here for centuries.

We praise and thank you for the American genius of government of the people, by the people and for the people.  Oh God of wisdom, justice, and might, we ask your guidance for those who govern us:  President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, Congress, the Supreme Court, and all those, including Governor Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan, who seek to serve the common good by seeking public office.  Make them all worthy to serve you by serving our country.  Help them remember that the only just government is the government that serves its citizens rather than itself. With your grace, may all Americans choose wisely as we consider the future course of public policy.

And finally Lord, we beseech your benediction on all of us who depart from here this evening, and on all those, in every land, who yearn to conduct their lives in freedom and justice.  We beg you to remember, as we pledge to remember, those who are not free; those who suffer for freedom’s cause; those who are poor, out of work, needy, sick, or alone; those who are persecuted for their religious convictions, those still ravaged by war.

And most of all, God Almighty, we thank you for the great gift of our beloved country.

For we are indeed “one nation under God,” and “in God we trust.”

So dear God, blessAmerica.  You who live and reign forever and ever.

Amen

 

Filed Under: Cardinal Dolan, Politics, Prayer 4 Comments

You Are What You Do/Say/Think….

September 8, 2012 By 1 Comment

I read once that when a neurosurgeon touches a spot on the human brain with a probe, he elicits memories.  All kinds of memories:  a moment in childhood, a school day, a family vacation from years past.  Sights, sounds, tastes, smells, feelings.  Pain and pleasure, fear and fury and fun.  Whatever is stored on that particular neural tract, on the slender, myelin-wrapped pathway, is revealed by the surgeon’s gentle touch.

It’s a sobering thought.  That means that everything we have thought and said and done—little kindnesses and base betrayals, virtues and sins—is still there somewhere.  We think we’ve gotten over the hurt of a high school rejection, we’ve quit smoking, we’ve left behind our childish habits; but those things are part of the mix, kneaded into the dough of our experience and contributing to the flavor of our very being.

We are who we are today—but just as surely, we are who we have always been.

The story was brought to mind recently by news reports of Maggie Meier, a young hoops star from Blue Valley Northwest High School in Overland  Park, Kansas.  Maggie became ill in 2008 with mycoplasma meningoencephalitis, a rare, intense form of meningitis.  She was in a coma for nearly three months; and during that time, she couldn’t speak or write or recognize family or friends.

What Maggie could do, though, was shoot basketballs.  The movements required to drive a basketball into the hoop were “so ingrained as one of Maggie’s basic instincts,” explained her neurologist, that her body remembered how to do it before she could walk or even stand.

The point I’m trying to make here is that for Maggie, the repetition of shooting hoops—the feel of the basketball in her hands, the swoop of her arms toward the basket—had been deeply imprinted in her brain.

You are what you do.

It’s good to reflect on this—to realize that on the Day of Judgment, we will stand before God and, like the surgeon touching a probe to our myelin strands, He will expose all that we have done, all that we have been.  Words spoken in haste, lies told to protect our reputations, traffic laws violated when no one’s looking, schemes to move up the social ladder:  Like Adam and Eve, we will be aware of our nakedness and will blush in shame.

How can we evade this fate?  We can’t.

But starting today, starting right now, we can begin to paper over the weaknesses, the embarrassing trivia of our lives, with memories that will stand up to Christ’s scrutiny.

We can give freely of ourselves to friends and strangers.  We can smile at small children and at the homeless man on the street.  We can say “I love you” whenever possible.  We can murmur prayers, sweet ejaculations of praise, as we go about our day.  In time, we will find those prayers on our lips as we open our eyes to the morning sun; and it is then that they will be imprinted on our neural pathways, etched in myelin.

And when the day comes—when our life on this earth is over and when at last we rest in the arms of the Father—we will have a great blanket of love to cover over the offenses and shortcomings.  We will still blush, as any imperfect thing blushes in the presence of great purity and light.  But we will hold up our gift of love, grateful to have something to offer—glad to have, in our lives, magnified the meager talents we were given.

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

–Philippians 4:8

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