P R A Y I N G W I T H T H E C H U R C H
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INTENTION : |
That through the support of the Christian community, all victims of addiction may find in the power of our saving God strength for a radical life change.
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True stories:
Pedro was 26, and a good boy, maybe rather a weak character, but he worked well as a bricklayer. He lived with his parents, whom he helped from his wages, and had a little girl who adored him, fruit of a relationship that had not lasted. Tragedy struck him when he began to let himself be drawn into drug-taking by those whom he called his friends in the neighbourhood. He began to live only for drugs, everything he earned was used to buy them… that is, while he still had work, because later on he was incapable of keeping up his work-commitments, and started petty thieving in his own house, and those of his relations. That led him to be rejected by his own people, who were afraid of him. He began to live more or less on the street, took no care of personal cleanliness and spent the whole night on the corner with a group of drug-addicts. He scarcely slept or ate, he was only interested in drugs. He became so thin that he seemed like a ghost wandering around the neighbourhood giving trouble. The neighbours shook their heads, saying 'He was such a good boy… 'His parents' sorrow and shame made his mother say one day 'I'd rather my son were dead…'. Alejandra, a young drug-addict who was only 16, very pretty, who lived more on the street than at home, without a real family, without studies, said to me one day 'Father, I want to go to prison, because that's the only place where I wouldn't be able to get drugs.' Her dependence on drugs had destroyed her physically, her lovely face was haggard, and she had a scar on her forehead from some street-fight. With some friends she got involved in the theft of a car, and the following day she told me she was glad, because that would get her arrested, as in fact happened. Elsa was the youngest, and the only girl in a poor family in which there had only been boys. In spite of their poverty, she was the spoilt child who always got what she wanted. As a teenager she began to mix with people she knew on the street, and soon got into the drug scene. In that way she became wrapped up in the drug-trade, so that later, when she had a son, she and the child's father forced him to sell drugs in school. It was said in the neighbourhood that they used to give drugs to the little one from his earliest years, to quieten him when he cried.
The stories of Pedro, Alejandra and Elsa and her son happen very often, and, sadly, they go on being repeated today in many of our countries and in countless working-class neighbourhoods of our cities. The poor are usually those most affected by drug-dependence, because, although it is often found in better-off areas, people there have more resources to get out of the circle of destruction one day. Many factors lead to drug-taking, among them unstable family life, along with lack of stimulation and affection in infancy, which in its turn produces insecurity, lack of self-worth and of confidence to face the difficulties of life, to name the most important points. Certainly poverty and lack of opportunities in youth, even though not decisive for falling into drug-taking, are so for staying trapped in the 'vicious circle' of drugs. Personal instability and poverty made the protagonists of those stories vulnerable targets for traffickers. For that reason, in praying together with the Holy Father for this intention, let us pray also for a more just society, where our young people may have access to a good education, feel themselves loved, valued and respected, and grow up in a healthy and decent environment. Let us pray this month for all those who have lost their interior freedom and, as a consequence, their human dignity. Let us pray for those enslaved by drugs and other kinds of dependency: alcohol, gambling-games, addiction to sex and pornography, unbridled ambition and fixation on money and power, and most recently, addiction to the internet, among the most frequent forms. Let us ask that these persons may meet, in the saving power of God, the force for change, and that they may be helped by the welcome and support of Christian communities.
Christ freed us so that we might remain free, says St Paul (Gal 5:1), doubtless the fruit of his own experience of being saved from the slaveries of his past life. In the letter to the Philippians he bears witness to his complete change of values: the things that were priorities, and obsessed him before, came to be considered rubbish compared with knowing Christ and being found by him. (3:1-14). In following Christ, St Paul became inwardly free, and discovered that this was the way to reach authentic humanity and true happiness.
So let us pray, united with the Pope, that all people may have a decent, human life, interiorly free and happy. It will be an opportunity for reflection for ourselves; we ought also to be more attentive to the small and great slaveries that curtail our liberty, for example vices, addictions, fears, low self-esteem, insecurities, and so on. This month's intention for prayer will help us to a more integrated personal life.
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