God of all peoples, please receive from all ages the sufferings of the innocent and the contrite, in reparation for the sins of the guilty!
Behold—
the bereaved and the deserted…the hopeless and the despairing…the displaced and the poverty-stricken…the injured and the physically sick…the mentally and the emotionally ill…the retarded and the incapacitated…the frustrated and the afraid…the isolated and the elderly…the addicted, the imprisoned and the persecuted. Behold those young, to old, sinned against by injustice, misunderstanding, abuse and neglect…those whose hearts this world has broken…those crushed by remorse and racked by misery and sin…those with lives empty of purpose—
all persons with suffering within or with suffering imposed from an external source! Please receive their pain, grief and loneliness, their weariness, anxiety or desperation—in conjunction with the spiritual, mental and physical anguish of Your Son, as reparation for all the sins of humankind.
God, through Your love of Jesus, please bless and welcome the sufferers! Hold them gently in Your arms and comfort them. Heal them, claim them, and fill them with Your life and peace.
Please accept all the undirected suffering of those who do not know God. Receive this suffering in atonement for all offences against You and any person. Allow Your mercy, compassion and power to release humankind from bondage to sin, suffering, and death.
You grant me compassion to desire to bring their pain to Your redeeming grace. Therefore, gather their tears, those fallen and those unshed. Draw them up into yourself through the sun of divine love, to purify them as a rain of mercy to fall upon the parched souls of humankind. Thus, we may grow in Your love and the earth may be filled with life and fruitfulness pleasing to Your divine purposes.
Our God, out of all the cries and moans and tears, hidden or revealed, from earth’s beginning, please hear our prayer. Joined as one with Your Son we all cry out—“My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?” Of those who torment and those who pass by uncaring and unseeing, we say—“Father, forgive them. They know not what they do and fail to do!” With Him we then cry trustingly—“Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit!”
God, please listen to our prayer, in union with Your beloved Son whom You raised from death to everlasting glory and joy. In Him who bore all humankind’s sins, please receive all suffering, struggle and sorrow that sin has brought upon our race.
Anything separated from God is meaningless, but in God, all becomes renewed and holy. Please accept from Jesus’ hands the suffering of every person throughout time, held within His own redemptive suffering. This that the whole price of atonement is met, and harmony is restored to Creation in the eternal triumph of Your Kingdom. Thank You, God of our redemption! September 8, 1980
I always find it so painful for those who suffer debilitating illnesses, and for their loved ones. When you know they can never get better, only worse, and often they are increasingly trapped by their illness and disabilities. I implore God to give them, and their loved ones and carers, special interior resources to find some richness in life even as their illness progresses.
