Four days before Thanksgiving — a holiday that celebrates unity and gratitude among Americans — Catholics throughout the Arlington diocese gathered at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington to pray for the nation.
Bishop Michael F. Burbidge celebrated the Nov. 24 Prayer Service for Unity and Healing in the United States. More than 200 Catholics, including families, multicultural groups, diocesan school students and college students, attended the service organized by the diocesan multicultural ministries office.
“We see in our country during these turbulent times harshness and division, restlessness, even violence and discrimination, injustice,” Bishop Burbidge said in his homily. He reflected upon the Gospel reading in which Jesus prayed to the Father for unity among all peoples the night before he died: “Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me.” (Jn 17:25)
Recent violent events and deepened cultural divisions are further evidence that Jesus’ prayer to the Father has yet to be fulfilled, yet we should not despair, Bishop Burbidge said. “We’re believers, and so we come to the Lord tonight in prayer, asking him to touch and transform hearts and lives.”
But we cannot stop at prayer, he added. “We all know that praying for unity and healing is not sufficient, for the Lord calls us to do at least our part, to be instruments of those gifts, wherever he sends us each day, in our homes, at work, in school, in our parishes, and our communities.”
Our country is in need of healing, but so are many of us, Bishop Burbidge said. “Maybe you are praying for unity because your family is divided or fractured,” he said. “Perhaps you’re here this evening praying for healing in your own life, physically, spiritually, and/or emotionally. In faith, tell Jesus what you need him to do for you and be filled with joyful anticipation, trusting his promise that he will respond to your prayer … Show him your wounds.”
Attendees gathered for a reception after the prayer service. For Olivia Price, a sophomore at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, cultural and political division is rife in campus culture.
“Our campus, it can be very divisive sometimes,” she said. She recalled that a few weeks ago, students from the university’s Catholic Campus Ministry hosted an event with the pro-life group Students for Life. “Ever since then, there’s been a tension on campus,” she said. “We’re getting through it.”
“I just try to remember that people my age are especially passionate about politics … and they’ll eventually cool down. It’s not going to be this way forever,” she added.
Paulinus Ntutin, a member of the Cameroonian Catholic Community, said that his peers worry about not only cultural discord in the U.S. but also religious persecution in their home country. This month, six Catholic priests from the Archdiocese of Bamenda in Cameroon were kidnapped shortly after some 315 students and teachers were kidnapped from St. Mary High School in central Nigeria. Some 50 students managed to escape, according to the Christian Association of Nigeria Nov. 23, but 265 still remain in captivity.
“It’s a moment of trial,” Ntutin said. “So, there’s a serious battle that we are fighting right now, a battle between principalities and spirits.”
In frightening times like these, prayer as a church is all the more needed, he added. “We are all baptized; we are all God’s children. So, together, we pray for unity.
