A Prayer for America

(In memory of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin)

By Gerald Kellman, M.Div.

Our Lord God
You are not a Democrat or a Republican
Nor a liberal or a conservative
You are not American or Chinese or Russian
Nor Catholic, or Jewish or Muslim
Nor Black, White or Latino
Nor are you poor or wealthy or gay or straight
You do not dictate a strategy to pursue an issue
You do not champion an ideology or particular church above all others
You are wider than all of our disputes and deeper than all of our meanness
As you told Moses on Sinai, your name is “I will be as I will be”

We are done with claiming that you are on our side and not on theirs
We are done pretending that you have told us that one form
of protecting life is dear to you and another is not
That one legislative or judicial strategy is yours and another is not
You reveal yourself and your will to all of us, not just to some of us
We will wrap ourselves in your seamless garment of life

You told your disciples, “Whatever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters,
You do for me”
You are the God of justice, compassion and life
You ache at the disparities of our world and at our hatreds
You are the prince of peace who does not tolerate war as a first resort
We first come to know you in relationship
We come to know you in one another
W pray for your return to our troubled world and our struggling country
As Rabbi Abraham Heschel said, “You are either the father of all men or no man, concerned about everything or nothing.”
We see you in all men and women
We see you in everything

We thank you for our Church, which we love in her beauty and her humanness
We thank you for the sacraments that bring you to us
That point to you
That transform us
We thank you for the saints who intercede on our behalf
We thank you for being the creator of this world which is precious beyond all words
We thank you for becoming human and knowing what it is to be one of us
We thank you for becoming spirit and coming to us when more than one of us
Is gathered in your name
Along with Father Thomas Merton, we pray that our “desire to please you,
Does in fact please you, And that we hope…
That we will never do anything apart from that desire”

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
World without end
AMEN

Jerry Kellman is a Director of Adult Spiritual Formation for the Archdiocese of Chicago. He recruited Barack Obama to work with him as a community organizer, in eight Catholic parishes, on the south side of Chicago in 1985. Together they addressed the economic and social needs of a struggling community.