We all need to hear and believe deep in our hearts today’s Responsorial Psalm, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” So many hearts in our country and throughout the globe continue to be broken, and they don’t know where to look for consolation, healing, and hope.

There is the husband who furiously digs in the rubble of Gaza for the body of his wife. She, like the other 46,000 men, women, and children killed in the Israel-Gaza war, whose loved ones cry out amid the destruction, “Where is the Lord in my agony and brokenness.”

There is the mother, in the drought-ravaged Sub-Saharan, who is starving and seeking sustenance for her child but finds none. Her heart was broken, and if she had any energy left, she, too, would cry out to God.

There are refugee families, part of the Great Migration, fleeing famine, violence, and persecution, who are met with anger, fences, and walls and are forced to “move on.” Quoting the Psalmist, “When the just cry, the Lord hears them and from all their distress he rescues them.” They ask where is this Lord?

There is the single mother in an American inner city, whose son is in the wrong place at the wrong time and is killed in gang crossfire. She cries out from her brokenness.

There was another who cried out in a sense of abandonment from the cross, “Lord, why have you abandoned me?” Three days later, he was raised from the tomb. Is there new hope for those who cry out? Jesus rose and promised us eternal life. But the cry of the poor still is heard.

It is we who eat the Body and drink the Blood of the Risen Lord who are charged to answer the cries of those who seek the Lord and heal the broken-hearted.

Let Us Pray:

God of all creation, all that you made you proclaimed as good. Our unwillingness to accept you as our focus led us to corrupt what you created. We, a people of brokenness, call out to you to give us abundant grace in this Jubilee of Hope to reach out to all who are broken and heal them in your name with the power of your Abiding Presence. Amen.