Calling Forth a New Vision for Action - The Gulf Coast Disaster

The following is from Prayerful Reflections and Faithful Responses to the Gulf Coast Disaster, a free resource prepared by JustFaith Ministries. JustFaith offers gives permission to parishes to reprint this. Please simply acknowledge JustFaith Ministries in your reprint.

The crises exposed and created by Hurricane Katrina speak to a political and economic system that is broken. The widespread poverty and latent racism in our country and the massive poverty and suffering created by deprivation around the world speak to an economy and politics that are often dictated by greed and lovelessness. Our political reality is frequently a source of global concern and sometimes even disdain.

The great prophets of the scriptures frequently spoke with anger and angst and called for reform when Israel found itself dominated by political and economic realities that were, in fact, structures of death. These structures of death are with us here and now.

As the Catholic community of faith continues to pray, mourn, respond, theologize, reflect, rebuild and consider the aftermath of Katrina (and other crises of our world), perhaps it is time to consider a new way.

• Perhaps it is time for Catholics and other people of faith to reject politics-as-usual
  and economics-as-usual.
• Perhaps it is time to begin thinking about what it would mean to create new
  expressions of political organizing and political will that respond to the
  mandate of the common good and the dignity of every human person with
  passion and devotion.
• Perhaps it is time to begin to act on this mandate as if it were the most important
  political possibility instead of merely an afterthought.
• Perhaps it is time for new thinking and new wineskins for the best wine – the
  wine of justice and compassion.

We don’t pretend to have the answers or know the way, but we do know we long for a new reality and we long for the voices, the leadership, the vision, and the strategies to see that new reality come.

Let us pray sincerely and openly for the Holy Spirit to inspire!

God is our refuge and strength,
An ever-present help in times of trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
Though the earth should change,
Though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,
Though its waters roar and foam,
And the mountains tremble at its surging.
Be still and know that I am God!
The Lord of hosts is with us…
The God of Jacob is our refuge.

Psalm 46: 1-3, 10, 11

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