For a World in Upheaval

Dear All Souls,

Last week I wrote in the Pastoral Words:

“I am always careful about which moments in our shared public life I speak into and which I hold more quietly before God. Not every headline needs a pastoral letter. Not every crisis requires a statement. There is, I am learning more and more, wisdom in restraint, and faithfulness in silence. But there are moments when prayer refuses to stay private.

In the wake of the recent death of Renée Good in Minneapolis, and amid the rising tensions surrounding immigration enforcement across our country, I have found that my prayers are no longer staying neatly tucked inside my own prayer book. They are pressing outward. To be clear, I write to you not as a pundit, nor as an expert in law or policy. I am neither of those things. Rather, I write as a human being, as the descendent of immigrants, and as a priest entrusted with the care of a community that is itself made up of many stories, many fears, many hopes, many questions.”

While writing that letter, I could not have imagined I would be writing to you again so soon. And yet each day has arrived carrying new reasons to grieve, new reminders of how fragile our common life feels right now.

In Minnesota, a man named Alex Jeffrey Pretti was killed during an encounter with federal immigration agents. As with so many moments like this, investigations will proceed, statements will be issued, and competing accounts will circulate. All of that has its place. But before we move too quickly to explanation or defense, there is a truth that demands our attention: a human life has been taken, and the manner of that taking bears the weight of injustice. The images and witness we have been given are deeply disturbing. They ask more of us than analysis. They ask for lament. Christ, have mercy.

Christians may disagree, in good faith, about laws, borders, and policies. But what is before us here is not finally a policy debate. It is a question of how fear and power are allowed to shape our treatment of one another. When force escalates quickly, when dignity is treated as expendable, when whole communities are made to live under the shadow of suspicion, something has gone profoundly wrong. These are not morally ambiguous matters. They stand in direct tension with the life and reign of Jesus, who meets human beings not first as threats, but as neighbors.

Moments like this can leave us feeling as though the seams of our society are tearing. Scenes that once felt distant now unfold close to home. The accumulation of harm can harden us, or exhaust us, or tempt us toward despair. And yet, as followers of Christ, we are not permitted the luxury of hopelessness. We are a resurrection people. We believe that death does not get the final word, even when it speaks loudly and often.

Christian hope is not a refusal to name evil, nor a quiet acceptance of a false peace. It is a stubborn, faithful refusal to believe that cruelty, violence, or deception will be the end of any person’s story. Or of our nation’s. Hope tells the truth without surrendering to rage. It stays. It refuses to let go. It entrusts even what feels unbearably broken to the God who brings life out of graves.

Prayer, in times like these, is not an escape from reality. It is how we resist the false clarity that fear offers us. In prayer we slow down enough to see again. We begin to notice where we have grown numb, where we have become certain too fast, where our speech risks doing harm even when it is well-intentioned.

The Church does not exist to provide a running commentary on every crisis, nor to compete with the loudest voices by speaking more forcefully. We exist to keep alive a different posture in the world. One that stays close to the human face. One that does not decide too quickly whose suffering counts. One that trusts that God is present even where the way forward is not yet clear.

This does not mean neutrality. It means care. It means allowing prayer to interrupt us, to unsettle our settled stories, to reveal where our loyalties may have quietly drifted from the way of Christ. Sometimes we cannot yet say what must be done, but we can say where we will stand. We stand where truth is costly rather than convenient. We stand with those whose lives are made precarious. We stand where prayer strips us of the illusion that we are innocent observers.

Because when the Church prays truthfully, it is changed. And real change, real faithfulness, takes time.

To help us pray in these days, I am sharing two resources below. One is the Great Litany, a prayer the Church has carried for centuries in times of fear, violence, and upheaval. It does not rush to resolution. It names danger honestly and asks for mercy without pretense. It teaches us how to pray when our own words fail.

I am also sharing a Novena I recently wrote. A novena is a simple, ancient practice of returning to the same prayer over nine days. It is not about intensity or getting it right. It is about staying. About placing what we cannot fix into God’s hands again and again, and allowing prayer to work on us slowly, the way love does.

If you are unsure how to pray, borrow these words. If you feel unable to pray at all, let the Church carry you for a while. Weariness, anger, grief, and confusion are not failures of faith. They are often the soil where faith begins again.

We are a people shaped by the cross and the resurrection. We do not deny the wound. And we do not concede the future to it either. So we will keep gathering. We will keep breaking bread. We will keep telling the truth as gently and bravely as we can. And we will keep placing our lives into the hands of the One who remains present to the world, even when the world feels as though it is coming apart.

With love and prayer,

Bliss+