—Katherine Mead-Brewer

I’ve been thinking a great deal about death lately. Not only is it the week of Halloween, but I’ve also recently had more than a few friends suffer through major surgeries, vehicle collisions, and severe illness. And so maybe it’s because of these events and meditations that I’ve also been feeling especially grateful to have such a life- and living-centered faith. For although many focus on the torment and violent death of Christ, it is important to also constantly remind oneself of what it was he was dying for. To my mind, Christ was not simply a sacrifice, but a man who died for his dedication to the love, life, and eternity of the world. The legacy of Jesus then, for me, has always been a life-centered faith. A faith where the mysterious God empowers us to conquer death, where all things are interconnected and eternal rather than isolated, linear, and full of endings.

Despite this legacy, however, the Christian Church, like many religions, has left in its wake a tremendously bloody history thanks to the failings, fears, and prejudices of its practitioners over the centuries: persecution of countless men and women as witches, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and many other instances of war, terrorism, conquest, and “cleansing.”

As Halloween is nearly upon us, it strikes me as a strangely ideal time to pause and give a moment of remembrance to those who have suffered and to those who continue to suffer at the hands of people who claim to be acting in the name and service of God.

To aid you in this, I leave you with a prayer from Michel Quoist’s classic meditation, Prayers:

            Grant me, Lord, to spread true love in the world.

            Grant that by me and by your children it may penetrate a little

                        into all circles, all societies, all economic and political

                        systems, all laws, all contracts, all rulings;

            Grant that it may penetrate into offices, factories, apartment

                        buildings, movie houses, dance halls;

            Grant that it may penetrate the hearts of men and that I may

                        never forget that the battle for a better world is a battle of

                        love, in the service of love.

(Quoist, pg 103)

Christ Church Cemetery, Alexandria, VA

Photo by Jessica Sexton, OSP Youth Minister