Praying on Contingency

I wondered if Americans should be required to pray on a contingency agreement.  I was moment away from getting ready for Mass on May 25th.  And I wondered if the same dull Prayers of the Faithful would be recited?  Those for our sick, for our dead, for our community?  I think lay people or a committee wrote the prayer that never quite reflected current events until a week later, unless it was about our city.  This parish could be worse than the local TV news, demanding a local angle to the world’s suffering.  Yet in the news, the suffering was beyond comprehension.  Dams were ready to collapse, millions were ready to starve…..from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:

 

Burmese villages, people line the roads in the Irrawaddy Delta waiting for aid.  In village after village they endure the sweltering morning sun, the afternoon monsoon rains and the storm-pregnant evening skies, under which their ghostly figures are illuminated by thunderbolts.  When an occasional car carrying donations approaches, children swarm toward it holding out their hands. Mothers hugging babies, too ashamed or shocked to ask for help, just stare into the eyes of any visitors. Fathers and grandmothers stand by, watching the scene with eyes filled with nothing but humility.

And in China, earlier Sunday the Chinese Cabinet said the confirmed death toll from the May 12th quake rose to 62,664, with another 23,775 people missing. Premier Wen Jiabao has said the number of dead could surpass 80,000.  Millions have been left homeless, some now at risk of being inundated by floods from new lakes that have been formed by rivers blocked by landslides unleashed by the quake.  The State Meteorological Bureau said Sunday that parts of Sichuan would suffer “heavy and even in some areas torrential rains” later Sunday and Monday, warning of possible mudslides.  About 20,000 people had been evacuated in the disaster area due to risks of floods and the total who need to be relocated could rise to 100,000, the chief engineer at the Ministry of Water Resources told reporters in Beijing.  The ministry also said Sunday that 69 dams in Sichuan were in danger of collapse due to quake-related damage. It did not give further details.  The government had earlier said the quake affected 391 dams, mostly small structures. Authorities have said the world’s largest water project — the Three Gorges dam, located about 350 miles (560 kilometers) east of the epicenter — was not damaged.

But in Minneapolis, the Faithful really did not know how to pray yet if it was only for ourselves.  No wonder the pews were not always very full with this pastor overseeing or not overseeing his committee.  What if we were first required to pray with fervor on a 1/3rd contingency for people far away.