All these world days of this or that really annoy me when promoted through church entities. For example: February 8 International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking It is celebrated on the Feast of St. Josephine Bakhita, also known as ‘Mother Moretta’ who bore 144 physical scars from when she was kidnapped at age nine and sold into slavery. Let us pray for the victims and for those who work to end human trafficking. To learn more about this important issue, visit the RCMP Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre website: http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ht-tp/index-eng.htm A Prayer for an End to Human Trafficking God of freedom, beauty, and truth we believe that your deepest desire, your most powerful energy, is that all creation might know abundant life. We raise our voices in anguished prayer for our sisters and brothers, women and girls, men, and boys, who are modern day slaves; They are your beloved daughters and sons, exploited sexually or forced to work because of human violence and greed. Fill us with your holy anger and your sacred passion that those who are trafficked might know healing and justice; that traffickers will come to repentance and conversion; that all of us might live in such a way that others are not made to pay the price for our comfort and convenience. Hasten the coming of the day when all people and our precious Earth itself will be treated, not as a commodity, but as radiant images of your freedom, beauty and truth. Amen. May it be so. (Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, Convent Station, N.J.) --- February 11 World Day of the Sick is observed each year on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. This year's theme is “Take care of him” - Compassion as a Synodal exercise of healing. "On the thirty-first World Day of the Sick, as the whole Church journeys along the synodal path, I invite all of us to reflect on the fact that it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God, which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness" - Pope Francis Read Pope Francis' message: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/sick/documents/202301 10-giornata-malato.html Rather than learn more about St. Josephine or Our Lady of Lourdes, and invoking their intercession, the "we are church" crowd pray to some god of beauty etc etc. It's like the intercession of the saints with God, The Holy Trinity, is meaningless. IMHO, this is a very subtle way of cutting us off from the help of the Church Triumphant, which we so desperately need.
