PRAYING FACEBOOK FOR PEACE, JUSTICE, AND LOVE OF NEIGHBOR

 

"Yes we Klan," by Annie Spratt

Courtesy of Unsplash

"If a stranger dwell in your land, and abide among you,

do not upbraid him: but let him be among you as one of

the same country and you shall love him as yourselves:

for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

I am the Lord your God"

Leviticus 19:33-34

✞

Not only are we commanded to love the strangers among us in the Old Testament, but Jesus clearly told us that to love our neighbors was only the second-most important commandment, and it was very like the first, which was to love God with all of ourselves. So, of course, it is upsetting for an American Catholic to see the mass unjust assault upon our immigrant communities that is being reported daily. News programs, commentaries, newspapers, magazines, all of the internet, including social media like Facebook, is awash with news of random wholesale round-ups of large groups of immigrants who are being treated with breathtaking and despicable cruelty, on the orders of the new Trump administration, part two. 

✞

Instead of targeting the violent criminals, as Trump promised he would do throughout his campaign, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is violating the sanctity of our churches, the school playgrounds, courthouses where law-abiding immigrants are following the legal processes for obtaining citizenship, vegetable fields, fruit orchards, and other places of traditional employment  where immigrants (mostly Hispanic) are likely to be found. 

✞

Fully kitted out with combat military style gear and battle dress, their faces hidden by masks, without producing any warrants of arrest, ICE has been grabbing up random groups of peaceful, law-abiding folk, kidnapping them, ignoring their due process rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and disappearing them.

✞

The Trump administration is targeting hard working, church-going, non-criminal moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, and children, violating their rights to due process, and subjecting them to the horrors of dangerous prison communities in other countries, as well as purposefully cruel locations in the U.S., such as "Alligator Alcatraz."

✞

What is most horrifying is that I have seen self-identified "Christians" on Facebook gleefully fantasizing about alligators eating these members of our immigrant communities, celebrating the cruelty of full scale rendition to foreign countries where they have never lived before, from which it is anticipated they will never be released, and justifying the harshest treatment for people who, if they are indeed here without documentation, have done nothing more than a misdemeanor civil infraction which is at the same level as a parking ticket! But these so-called "Christians" are happy to see their neighbors traumatized, at the very least, and possibly spending the rest of their lives in a foreign prison where they will die because it is really a concentration camp from which no one is ever release!

✞

Every day a fresh horror is announced in the news, and now I understand that FEMA will hand out $600 MILLION in grants to enable states to build "migrant detention facilities." These are the CONCENTRATION CAMPS OF 2025 and are evocative, at minimum, of the Japanese internment camps that our government created for Americans of Japanese ancestry in the 1940's when we were involved in a world-wide war!

✞

I have read that the Trump administration seems to be deliberately packing all our prisons and other places of ethnic concentration so that they can hand over huge contracts to their cronies who are in the lucrative business of building and running private prisons.

✞

The revulsion I feel for all of this has me completely triggered, and I cry every day - just as I was during Trump's first administration, when he was ripping children out of the arms of their parents and stuffing them into cages of chicken wire and cement.  (Approximately 1,000 children were never returned to their parents because the Trump administration could not be bothered to create a method to keep track of the parents and children when he sent the parents to one location and the children to another!)

✞

I really cannot bear the idea of ignoring today's news just to save myself from suffering my own trauma response. It would be wrong of me not to speak up. I must do that at least.

✞

"Open your mouth for those with no voice,

for the cause of all the dispossessed.

Open your mouth, judge righteously,

and defend the cause of the poor and needy."

Proverbs 31:8-9

✞

After I have cried, I am left feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the madness of what is going on in America at this moment. 

✞
It suddenly came to my mind recently that, in addition to offering up my tears and sorrow, I need to intercede in prayer every time I hear or read some awful news. Many times I learn of the latest travesty on Facebook, but sometimes I bring the news TO Facebook from elsewhere. It is important that we are all educated about what is happening so that we may speak out, but we are subjected to so many nightmarish scenarios that the cumulative sadness and despair have become toxic. 

✞

I have learned from decades of contemplative prayer that the thing on which I concentrate is the atmosphere in which I live. I am not going to ignore the bad news, but neither am I going to hide from it, doing nothing to sweeten the fetid air we are being forced to breathe.

✞  So I have started "praying Facebook."

Every time I encounter one of these distressing and lamentable news items, I am offering up my tears, begging for the intercession of our Lord and Lady, the saints and angels, indeed, the entire Heavenly Court.
✞
In addition to the specific prayer, I pray the short, reliable prayers on which I have grown to depend:
✞
OUR FATHER
HAIL MARY
GLORY BE
FATIMA PRAYER
JESUS PRAYER
✞
If I have time, I will also include
✞
PRAYER TO SAINT MICHAEL
PRAYER TO MY GUARDIAN ANGEL
A ROSARY
A CHAPLET TO OUR LADY OF SORROW
✞
Please join me in "praying Facebook" to restore order, peace and brotherly love in our land, instead of cruel authoritarian punishment that lacks the due process guaranteed by our Constitution. Pray whatever prayer is in your wheelhouse - and join with us who have decided to lift all hearts to Heaven with our prayers.

TODAY'S PRAYER NEED:

✞

✞ Deport violent criminals and revamp our immigration facilities and services.
Trump campaigned on deporting violent criminals from our country. INSTEAD, he pardoned and freed the violent criminals that attacked the police on January 6, and is in the process of incarcerating every brown person he can find in the most frightful, dangerous and inhumane concentration camps imaginable. 

Let us pray:

• That Trump reverse this trend and only deport the violent criminals;
• that all incarcerations in these concentration camps CEASE and that all immigrants who do not have criminal background be immediately released and their appeals for citizenship be placed back in the courts where they belong;
• That, instead of building private prisons designed for the torture of our immigrant population and the unjust enrichment of the wealthy oligarch overlords, that the money offered by FEMA be spent on facilities and services necessary to create wide spread, compassionate, efficient and just immigration reform. 

✞ Peaceful civilians should be left in peace!
During the presidential campaign, the majority of Americans were in agreement that murderers, rapists and other violent criminals have no place in American society and should be deported once their case is adjudicated. But none of us was prepared for the entire immigrant community to be callously attacked en mass by masked men, harshly deprived of their Constitutionally protected rights, kidnapped from their homes, their work places, churches, schools, and lawful immigration hearings. 

Let us pray:

• that schools, work places, churches and other houses of worship be left alone and not assaulted with brutal ICE raids;
• that Constitutionally guaranteed due process be reinstated in every case; and,
• that ICE remove the masks and behave professionally, kindly, and respectfully toward our immigrant communities .

✞ The majority of Immigrants are not criminals
The vast majority of these immigrants (more than 75%) have NO CRIMINAL BACKGROUND WHATSOEVER. In fact, the Immigrant population has a lower percentage of criminality than the American citizens. 

✞

A number of the kidnapped and disappeared are actual citizens, but the kidnappers reject this information and whisk them away to an uncertain fate. 

✞

ICE has even tried to send some of our immigrants to foreign countries that are not their own and in which their lives are most certainly in danger, since these countries are well-known to be war torn arenas, and the immigrants do not even know the language! It is highly doubtful that they have ever visited or have even heard of the country, in many cases. 

Therefore, let us pray:

• that only those immigrants that have been properly adjudicated and found guilty of serious crimes be targeted;
• that everyone on American soil receives due process guaranteed by the American Constitution; and,
• that arresting officers must identify themselves, stop wearing masks, produce warrants for arrest, and in all ways behave with dignity and decorum befitting their office.

✞ Immigrant labor is essential to the welbeing of our country.
For many decades, we have depended upon the immigrant community to babysit our children, take care of our elderly, build our homes and community halls, pick and plant our fruits and vegetables, and perform all manner of highly skilled labor. Most Americans have not been keen to do this type of work themselves, and we have already seen the devastation that is caused by the sudden disappearance of the immigrant community upon which we rely. 

✞

It is widely believed by economists and government experts that the deportation of a large portion of our skilled immigrant labor will likely result in much higher prices for all goods and services. This reality, combined with the effects of the arcane tariffs being levied against merchandise imported into our country is estimated to cause a desperate increase in poverty and sky-high food prices.

Therefore, let us pray:

• that temporary guest worker visas and other methods of incorporating immigrant laborers into our economy be created so that they may legally pursue the work that has been done by them for decades.

✞ Immigration reform will incorporate the useful and protect us from crime at the same time.

Let us pray:

• that, instead of building concentration camps and persecuting our hard working and loyal immigrant community, bipartisan efforts be made to reform and streamline our immigration system so that our valuable and skilled immigrants who are innocent of violent crime can more quickly and reliably establish themselves as fully functioning members of our neighborhoods and our society as a whole;

• that, at the same time, we streamline methods of deportation of immigrants with criminal backgrounds, especially those with violent pasts;

• that efforts be made to pinpoint and strengthen areas of America's special needs, such as in agriculture and the building trades, as well as other employment in which our immigrant communities have consistently shone bright in the specialized skills that they have developed over the many years they have contributed to our economy with that essential labor.

✞ Pray for a loving conversion of heart for all people.

Let us pray 

• that all Americans realize the value of our immigrant neighbors;
• that love of neighbor be instilled in our hearts by our Lord;
• that we all recognize the essential humanity we share and take to heart the precept that it is sinful to torture other human beings under any circumstances;
• that we all be enlightened by the action of the Holy Spirit so that preposterous conspiracy theories do not find purchase in any part of our minds;
• that we all maintain the Love of God and Love of neighbor so that we freely and without reserve accept the conversion of hearts of those who previously believed in harmful theories that hurt our neighbors; and,
• that we all strive to be as loving and forgiving as Christ.

✞

In Jesus name, I pray that that those of good will may be inspired to join us daily in sincere prayer for the improvement of the situation in our country that is causing so much pain for so many.

✞

I realize that this blog post is rather long, but it is an introduction to this topic, and I intend to continue to post shorter calls to prayer on this platform as well as Facebook. I pray you are able to join me, in whatever manner you have the time and strength to do.

✞

May the Lord bless you all. Please pray for me as I pray for you.

✞

Silver Rose