Saturday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Cry out to the Lord... Pour out your heart like water in the Lord's presence. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint from hunger at the corner of every street. - Lamentations 2:18b-19

Pour out your heart like water. The Lamentations poet is not asking for moderate honesty before the Lord. He is asking for the complete emptying - heart like water poured out, nothing held back, the full grief of the ruins given to the Lord in the prayer.

Lift up your hands to him for the life of your children. The parent's prayer in the ruins is the last thing available when everything else has been taken: the hands lifted, the children named, the life of the children asked for from the only one who can give it.

He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases. Matthew's quote of Isaiah at the end of the evening's healing is the answer to the Lamentations poet's lifted hands: the one who hears the pouring-out is the one who takes the infirmities into himself. The bearing is real. The taking-away is real.

Pour out your heart like water in the Lord's presence. Lift up your hands for the life of someone specific this week. Not the general prayer for their wellbeing - the specific, honest, poured-out prayer for their specific life. The Lord who takes away infirmities hears the poured-out prayer.

Lord, I pour out my heart like water in your presence. Take the infirmities. Bear the diseases. Lift up the lives of those I am lifting my hands for. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in you. Amen.