One of Mark Shea's readers, an active-duty soldier, asks that Catholics devote this Friday, the Feast of the Assumption in the Roman Catholic church, to praying for world peace. The reader writes:
What is apparently going on in Russia, Georgia, South Ossetia, and what it about to go on in the Persian Gulf in blockading Iran could indeed lead to a World War One, or more accurately WW-III type conflagration. Although I don't see any evidence of the conspiracy theory "neocon manipulation" leading to the current situation, it is clear that events are unfolding that may be frighteningly irreversible. Call it Lucifer's due diligence.
Through Mark, the reader asks for prayers for world peace this Friday, through the intercession of the Virgin, with special emphasis on the Caucasus and the Middle East. I think it's a great idea. This Friday is the same Marian feast for the Orthodox (we call it the Dormition, and there are some theological differences with Catholics in our understanding of the event in the life of Christ's mother that it commemorates), and if anything we have even more reason to pray for peace, given that the Caucasus war involves hostilities between two Orthodox Christian countries.
I would like to invite all our readers -- Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and non-Christian -- to join together tomorrow to pray, in whatever way you pray, for the peace of the world. Please pass this on to your prayer chains, post to your blogs, get the word out some kind of way. I think our soldiers in the war zones -- I'm thinking of you especially, Another Believer -- would particularly appreciate it.
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Thanks for posting this, Rod. I'll be sure to pass it on, and join with you and the others tomorrow.
And let it begin with me.
O Blessed Queen of Peace, willing handmaid of the Lord of Hosts, Virgin Mother of the Prince of Peace, fallen asleep in the Lord and assumed bodily into Heaven, intercede for us with your Divine Son, that He may grant us peace if such be His Will. And if not, we pray that He smite our foes and lay waste their lands that we may celebrate His triumph over the henchmen of the Evil One.
The Lesson of the Traditional Mass of the Roman Rite for the Feast of the Assumption:
The Lord hath blessed thee by his power, because by thee he hath brought our enemies to nought. Blessed art thou, O daughter, by the Lord the most high God, above all women upon the earth. Blessed be the Lord who made heaven and earth, who hath directed thee to the cutting off the head of the prince of our enemies. Because he hath so magnified thy name this day, that thy praise shall not depart out of the mouth of men who shall be mindful of the power of the Lord for ever, for that thou hast not spared thy life, by reason of the distress and tribulation of thy people, but hast prevented our ruin in the presence of our God. Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou art the joy of Israel, thou art the honour of our people.
(Judith 13:22-25; 15:10)
(Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption as a dogma in 1950.)
I didn't see this until now, and my day's nearly over. We should pray for peace. War is a waste of human potential, and I mean that in a very concrete way, not in a new-agey abstract way. Dead men don't love and work and raise children and better their nation.
I emailed my daughter, serving in Baghdad, last night about this day and the prayers of the world for peace.
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