Saturday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Lamentations 2:2, 10–14, 18–19
Some biblical texts are difficult to preach.
Not because they are unclear, but because they are too clear.
Today’s reading from Lamentations does not explain suffering from a distance.
It sits among the ruins.
The elders are silent. The young women bow their heads to the ground. The children faint in the streets. The walls of Jerusalem are told to cry out day and night.
This is not theology written in a classroom.
This is theology written with ashes.
The text reminds us of many cities, many peoples, many ruins.
Warsaw in 1945. A city broken almost beyond recognition.
The song Warszawo ma still carries the sorrow of a wounded people.
The film The Pianist shows a world emptied, a city turned into silence, a human being surviving among stones and ghosts.
It also reminds us of East Timor.
Burned churches. Burned houses. Families scattered. People carrying grief that no words can fully hold.
Such tragedies are beyond comparison.
And yet, we compare them because the human heart recognizes the same wound.
A city destroyed. A people humiliated. Children suffering. The innocent paying the price for the sins, blindness, pride, and violence of others.
The biblical author says that Jerusalem’s tragedy is connected with sin.
The city had refused the word of God. Its prophets had failed. Its leaders had misled the people. Its wound was not without history.
And yet, as we read Lamentations, we sense something more.
The author does not speak with cold satisfaction.
He does not say, “They deserved it,” and then walk away.
He weeps.
He looks at the suffering and seems almost unable to bear it.
The punishment seems greater than the guilt.
The pain exceeds explanation.
And perhaps this is why Lamentations remains so necessary.
It teaches us that faith does not always give easy answers.
Sometimes faith means standing before the ruins and refusing to lie.
Refusing to say that suffering is simple.
Refusing to turn victims into a lesson too quickly.
Refusing to use God’s name to silence human tears.
We have cried many times:
No more war.
And yet, we begin new wars.
We bury the dead, write songs of mourning, build monuments, make promises,
and then slowly prepare the next destruction.
Lamentations asks us to remember differently.
Not with nostalgia. Not with bitterness. Not with revenge.
But with a broken heart that has finally learned to listen.
“Cry out to the Lord,” the text says.
Rise in the night. Pour out your heart like water.
This may be the first honest prayer after disaster:
not explanation, not justification, but tears poured out before God.
And maybe, when tears become prayer, the long road toward repentance can begin.
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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© 2025 Krakus.
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