9 February 2023

There are days when the foundations of the earth seem to be shaken and we experience the limits of our omnipotence.

Help each of us to discern what still carries us.

There are days when you seem to sleep in the boat of humanity and the waves want to overwhelm everything.

Yet help us to believe in your presence with us.

There are days when the words “brotherhood” and “solidarity” seem to ring hollow.

Yet turn our gaze to so many modest actions, lived in discretion and gratuity.

There are days when the disparity of our living conditions, between countries, between fellow citizens, between generations, seems inexorably to increase.

Help us not to lose those you have entrusted to us.

There are days when our capacity for commitment seems difficult to maintain in the face of the magnitude of the problems facing our time.

Help us not to give in to weariness or fatalism, give us the energy of those who truly love.

Prayer

Yes, you are the God who brings us through the waters of the sea and of death. Do not stop the work of your hands, renew what our fathers told us, do not abandon our humanity to the excesses of the elements which it may have unleashed itself! Come, save us when we perish! Our prayer appeals to the very name of Jesus, in whom you save us, today as yesterday and until the end of time.