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special prayer
A Prayer to Defeat Antisemitism
Dear Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you were Jews and lived up to your faith, Judaism, all your lives.
You worked and taught the deeper meanings of your faith, not just to Jews, but through us Christians, both Jewish and gentile, to all humanity.
Oh Lord, we ask for forgiveness, as Pope St. John Paul II did, for the centuries of persecution Christians throughout the world perpetrated against your chosen people, the people of the Jew, Jesus, who died, as our Creed states clearly, at the hands of the Romans.
Oh Lord, the Second Vatican Council clearly condemned the false canard that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Tragically, this false canard was believed by many Christians over the centuries, and became the basis for modern racial antisemitism. We repent for this as well.
Lord Jesus, we see in you the sacredness of your people, the Jews. We pray that we will have the resolve to act, to do whatever we can and whatever is necessary, to defeat the evil of antisemitism, which we see with horror is now spreading again with acts of terror against synagogues and innocent Jews simply walking the streets around their homes.
We resolve to join together with good people of all faiths and none to fight the evil that is antisemitism. We resolve to teach our children in our Catholic classrooms that Jews remain the Chosen People of God and that to attack Jews is thus to attack the One God of all humanity.
We resolve to work with our communities, law enforcement agencies, local, state and national legislators, and all three branches of the federal government to call out antisemitism for the danger it presents not just to Jews but to all Americans, and indeed to the very idea of what it means to be American.
We pray that the Holy Spirit will infuse our souls and minds| to enable us to follow through on joining our sister and brother citizens of good will, to establish an American society that lives up to the best of what it means to be persons of faith and faithful American citizens.
Amen.
by Dr. Eugene Fisher Profiles in Catholicism
A Quote to Remember
"God has never stopped believing in the alliance made with Israel and, through the terrible trials of these past centuries, the Jews have kept their faith in God. And for this, we will never be grateful enough to them, as the Church, but also as humanity at large."
by Pope Francis