Posted by FatherTim at 6/4/2009 3:59 PM EDT
My friends,

First, I must tell you that your response to my "Pray For Us" blog post, in which I invited one and all to join our online community to make known their special prayers and needs, has been a great success. I hope you will continue to contribute, and to make others in need aware of this very special, though humble, resource. How Our Father loves to Hear from His Own, no matter the occasion or purpose!

And I thank you so much for inviting me into your lives, so that I may serve you and Our Lord better, and bring your intercessions to Him in my daily Masses -- and, I am sure -- for inviting others to join you in prayer and in the certainty that God hears and answers all the prayers of His Own Children, Whom He loves with a changeless and unchangeable Love.

Today, even as an anger so great against the perpretators and perpetuators of the Irish Catholic Church child abuse scandal well up from every corner, we must pray even for those whose perversions, sickness and conspiracy are at the center of this arena of ruined lives.

Even in what many say is a crime so black and soulless that it cannot be forgiven, they are truly the "lost sheep," and have strayed so far from Their Loving Creator that only His Outstretched Hand offers hope they can ever be guided back. That God can forgive those whose Souls come to Him goes without saying. Can Man? Perhaps not -- such is the depth of their depravity that no man's hand can pluck them from their living hell, nor do many want to. Our deepest thoughts and prayers are of course for the hundreds or thousands of victims, not their accused torturers.

We are not to judge, Jesus has warned again and again in His Teachings. But we are also reminded that, "As ye sew, so shall ye reap."

When we read of Christ's Passion, or share in The Stations of The Cross, we unite our minds with God's Mind, Whose Song of Love for all His Children is ceaseless. We remember Our Lord's suffering at the hands of His accusers, and we remember His Forgiveness of them, even unto the moment of His Own earthly death as his assassins gloated. This, the farthest, largest act of forgiveness that can even be imagined, brought Our Lord full-circle as the One Who was both Fully God and Fully Man.

It is this singular example of His Love and Forgiveness, however impossible it can seem for us in our current circumstances, that called us to Him as Christians

Ther are no exceptions to His Love. Nor to His Forgiveness. We can find His Peace -- which we all dearly crave -- only when we "let go, and let God." Let go of hatreds, however "just." Do you think your hatreds will lead you to His Peace? Or yours? They will lead you, but not to God.

To these sorry thieves of hearts in the Church, these lost, arrogant conspirators who kept their evil alive -- justice belongs to God. His Will be done.

As for the rest, let us pray! There is not one person, victim or victimizer, in this whole vile scandal who is undeserving of our prayers.

-- Father Tim