{"id":21600,"date":"2020-10-09T21:07:40","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T02:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalministries.org\/resource\/pray_with_guatemala_sunday_october_25_2020\/"},"modified":"2021-05-10T13:04:41","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T18:04:41","slug":"pray_with_guatemala_sunday_october_25_2020","status":"publish","type":"resource","link":"https:\/\/www.globalministries.org\/resource\/pray_with_guatemala_sunday_october_25_2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Pray with Guatemala, Sunday, October 25, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

En espa\u00f1ol<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Lectionary Selection:\u00a0<\/strong> Matthew 22:34-46<\/p>\n

Prayers for Guatemala<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We pray the one who was a martyr for the living and loving, raise people up in prayer at our Eucharistic table for the body and blood of creation and its guardians, so that the body and blood may be the cup of salvation.<\/p>\n

Prayer of Strength for Caring for Creation (Fr. Hugo R. Padilla)<\/em><\/p>\n

O Lord our God, you created the universe in all its splendor, its entire wonderful nature, and human beings a little inferior to the angels. You crowned humanity with glory and dignity. (Psalm 8). But we have betrayed you, irrationally using freedom and reason. We mistreat the land, exploit its resources, mutilate forests, divert rivers, pollute the earth with harmful chemicals. We take over your creation and transform it into chaos, threatening destruction.<\/p>\n

Therefore, we raise our prayers, asking for invincible strength and infinite wisdom to fight against the dispossession that destroys your creation and against the public policies that authorize the shameless and irrational abuse of the resources of your creation. Lord, be the engine that moves our dedication as we strive to harmonize men and women with everything created. Lord, Creator of the universe, helps us understand that you made us with the purpose of taking care of the beauty, tenderness, and love you put in your work. Give us wisdom and courage, omnipotent God, to rescue your work from the evil forces that mercilessly destroy it. Through your Son Jesus Christ, we ask this, Amen.<\/p>\n

Prayer of the Xinka people<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear God, grant to us Xinka indigenous people in southeastern Guatemala who reject mining in our territories and maintain a peaceful resistance against the Escobal mine of Pan American Silver based in Vancouver, Canada, the definitive closure of this mining project. Enforce our right against this powerful company that the Supreme Court of Justice ordered to suspend operations for not consulting us before starting their work.<\/p>\n

Mission Stewardship Moment from <\/strong>Guatemala<\/strong>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, I want to thank you for always being faithful in solidarity, prayer, and support to the ministry of the Christian Ecumenical Council of Guatemala and the Christian Continental Network for Peace. Your companions in the mission’s determination is a loving example of faith shine that I want to share with, in the light of the last confrontation of Jesus with the Pharisees (Matthew 22: 34-46).<\/p>\n

There are versions of Christianity, well organized and powerful, that continue rebuking Jesus’s people today, as the Pharisees did on the eve of the martyrdom of our Savior. Twisted and perverse visions that see their security threatened, in the following of faith that Jesus well modeled. As one of Jesus’ time, these religious groups continue to conspire to derail, discredit, and, perversely, annihilate love.<\/p>\n

In the dispute with the Pharisees, Jesus exposed the foundation of faith, that is love because we love God, we love our neighbor, and one love without the other is nonsense. The supreme, unique, and wise God, the Father of Jesus, and our Father call us to love, that is, to dispose of our entire life for the establishment of justice. Loving your neighbor (Lev. 19: 3-19) goes together with respect for parents and with providing for the needs of the poor and foreigners, with not stealing, not lying, not defrauding, not swearing false testimony, not oppressing or dislodging the other, not offending or hindering the dumb or the blind, not committing injustice or defaming, not feeding hatred or taking revenge. Jesus’s way and should be our live. For this reason, let us stop conceiving our faith as theological and doctrinal precepts or as mystical intimacy that escapes the world, and let us meet the suffered and with those who fight for justice and peace, let us coherently unite with them with God. Jesus is Lord, the anointed one who rules the universe, condemns ungodliness, and redeems creation. Express your faith, love.<\/p>\n

The guardians of the Forest, the young people from the community of Volcancito, municipality of Santa Rosa, Guatemala, with whom the Ecumenical Christian Council of Guatemala develops a project to harvest rainwater, understood that creation is their sister and that they should take care of her. Thus, they organize themselves to protect the water springs, and for that reason, we accompany them by developing a plant nursery to reforest them. They take care of the water and guard against the Canadian Pan American Silver mining company that poisons the water and violates our Sister Earth’s body. Hopefully, listening to them, we too rise as “guardians of creation.”<\/p>\n

Prayer and Mission Moment by Ricardo Mayol<\/p>\n

Mission Partners in <\/strong>Guatemala<\/strong>:<\/a><\/p>\n

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