1 April 2022 - Friday of the 4th week of Lent - Psalm 34

     “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and those who are crushed in spirit he saves.” – this is the refrain we hear in today’s psalm.  The psalmist goes on to say that the Lord hears the just when they cry out.  There are times in our lives when we are brokenhearted, when illness or death or divorce or crisis or failure leaves a void in our lives that seems to ache forever. When something like that happens, it seems like life will never be the same again, and maybe it won’t.  But, one day the pain and suffering give way to new life and to hope.  

       When I thought of the broken heartened, I thought of two groups of women that I met when I studied in Argentina and Chile in the summer of 2002 when I was a teacher at Greenville High School.  It is hard to believe that this was twenty years ago.  The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of mothers and grandmothers in Buenos Aires, Argentina that witnessed the disappearance of their children, husbands, and grandchildren who were kidnapped by the military government and were killed.  The Committee of Solidarity was a similar group of women in Santiago, Chile whose children and grandchildren were arrested and killed by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.  These two groups of women did not stand idle in their anger, frustration, and brokenheartedness.  The women in Argentina demonstrated in the main plaza in front of the governmental buildings.  They asked the military government about what happened to their loved ones.  The group of women in Chile developed an art form of embroidery and appliqué that depicted images of what was going on in their country.  Eventually, the military governments lost public approval in both of those countries as they transitioned back to democracies.  These groups still exist today, working for justice and peace in their own countries and around the world.  

         When we are brokenhearted, we are told to have confidence in the Lord.  The Lord wants us to reach out to him in the midst of our pain and sadness, to unite our sufferings with the sufferings that Jesus went through. Our prayer of the stations of the cross each Friday calls to mind the way we should do that.  The Lord reaches out to the bbrokenhearted in a very special way.  May we never forget that.