Issue Date: April 4, 2003
THE CANTICLE OF CONFESSION
By EDWARD HAYS
In the darkness we knelt, afraid to
confess. And out of the darkness came a tender voice:
Fear not, be
not afraid to unburden your hearts, for am I not your compassionate
Beloved?
* * *
O God, be merciful to us Your
children, for we confess that were guilty of war. Each citizen
participates in our nations sins. As the left hand shares the sins of
the right, so we each share in the immoral act of our country crossing
the world to wage war when no enemy threatens our shores.
Taxes provide the government with
our money to buy laser-precise rockets with wizard-like minds, as well as
stealth bombers and cluster bombs made to rain down destruction and
death. The representatives weve voted into office have mindlessly
rubber-stamped this war conceived by our President and the Pentagon that
will set in motion a domino effect of death.
Can we feel absolution when
were told it will be a quick and easy little war, that stocks will
go up, gas prices down? A fast and dashing fight, a new
blitzkrieg, a lightning war like the Germans quickly sweeping
over Polands ill-equipped army. Yet fast or long, all wars leave
behind a wasteland of suffering and death. As Germans bore guilt for
their war sins, and the Japanese assumed shame for theirs, how can we
Americans now escape our responsibility for this unjust war?
Some of us dont want our name
on any war and have told all who would listen of our opposition to an
immoral war. Yet the millions of antiwar protesters at home and across
the entire world have become muted, paralyzed and impotent to stop the
grinding wheels of war which we as Americans have helped to turn. We are,
paradoxically, powerless and responsible.
Yet our powerlessness allows us to
feel compassion for the peace-loving and patriotic Israeli Jew, whose
own military kills innocent Arabs and bulldozes his Palestinian
neighbors house under the pretext of hunting possible
terrorists. Our impotency opens us to share the pain of the peace-loving
Gaza Strip Palestinian whose human-bomb neighbor blows up an Israeli bus
full of women and children in a misguided martyrdom of a holy
war.
O God, we long for some sacrificial
goat upon whom the high priest of long ago would ritually invest the sins
of the nation, then drive it out into the desert to die. Through the
grace of the High Priest, Your Son, grant us such holy
atonement for this war being waged in our name, with our money, but
without Your blessing.
For this our national sin, and for
all our personal sins of failing to live peacefully, O merciful God,
grant to us absolution.
* * *
Out of the enclosing darkness
emerges a voice:
Your sin is forgiven. Go
in peace. But be prepared to reap the coming harvest youve sown on
the bitter winds of war.
Thank you for your gracious
forgiveness, but You didnt tell us about our penance.
At every opportunity you
are to wage peace and do the smallest of things with great
love.
We do not find that a very harsh
penance.
Its not intended as
punitive but purgative, for every small act of kindness done in love
shrinks your share in the coming great harvest of resentment, terrorism
and the threat of ever-escalating war.
Fr. Edward Hays, a priest of the archdiocese
of Kansas City, Kan., is the founder of Shantivanam House of Prayer in Easton,
Kan., and an accomplished author and artist. The Canticle of
Confession © 2003 Forest of Peace Publishing, Inc.;
www.forestofpeace.com. Reprinted with permission.
AUTHOR INFO HEREshould always be at least 10pt
National Catholic Reporter, April 4, 2003 |