LorSomething or maybe my Guardian Angel nudged me as I knelt down to say my night prayers.  We used to make a novena to Christ the King for freedom of religion in tough countries. We don’t do novenas any more like our grandparents, who also said the “Morning Offering” and “Bless us O Lord” before sitting down—together—to eat supper, and “Now I lay me down to sleep…” 

Well, we’re free to pray as we will. That’s it: we are free. I surely have not felt any reason to be immensely grateful for this freedom. Probably, it’s because I haven’t paid much attention to Catholics and Christians who wish they could be grateful. They live in North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, and Afghanistan—the nations persecuting religious persons, in order of awfulness. But the list goes on, which is a real surprise to me.  I thought persecuting religion was a thing of the Middle Ages or shortly thereafter. But it goes on and here are just a couple of instances.

When U.S. and NATO forces pulled out of Afghanistan in mid-2021, the extremist Islamic Taliban seized control and created the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” This moved it to the top of the list of persecutors, ahead of North Korea.

That is quite a distinction, because North Korea is anti-religious and especially despises Christianity. If you wonder what that means, the Christians in North Korea daily risk torture, prison, and execution for their faith.  Open Doors (Google it—you’ll really be edified) estimates that 50,000-70,000 Christians are held in prison camps in North Korea, that has a bomb it can’t wait to use.  It’s not new: right after World War II, North Korea tortured and executed more than a dozen monks and nuns (on the way to canonization). It’s no better now.

Anyhow, when I knelt down to say night prayers, I thought maybe we need some novenas or parish missions, or at least a lot more prayer than we’ve now grown used to, to get us back on our knees like our grandparents or like this Jesuit pope who used to pray on his knees but ruined them and now has to pray resting on another part of his anatomy, to thank God for our freedom, because that would make us aware that we are living in deep and unearned freedom the eternal life that we were baptized into and and celebrate at Mass on Sunday—and will live freely until Jesus calls us out of here, and that’s something to remember when we kneel down to pray tonight.

Amen.