On Sunday afternoon, July 24, I drove up to Dallas to see my sister Barbara (my favorite, but don’t tell the others!), who was in Dallas (actually Grapevine) for a conference. We had a delightful visit.
Driving up was rather depressing. Not because of the heavy traffic, but because of the terrible drought. While we are aware of the drought in the city, we are shielded from its full impact. Because of the watering and irrigation and sprinkler systems all around us, we don’t see the full ugly scar of the devastation. However, driving up to Dallas, the distress caused by the drought was inescapable: mile after mile of burnt grass, parched land, drooping trees and dusty roads and walkways. It was emotionally taxing. The land looks forlorn and forsaken. A feeling of barren dryness began to creep into my soul.
A few days before I went to Dallas I had gone out to McKinney Falls State Park for a short hike. I could only take about an hour of the heat. I was surprised to see the falls almost totally dried up. Only a small trickle of water was still flowing over the falls, and by the time you read this they may have dried up completely. I was distressed to see curled leaves, dried out bushes and tinder-dry vegetation everywhere. It is really bad.
All the life seems sucked out of the land, and there seems no relief in sight. There is a relentlessness to the drought which effects just about everything in nature. It almost has a spiritual aspect to it, a sort of manifestation of evil, or at least of great loss.
What can we do? Well, we can pray for rain. So I offer you this prayer. It comes from the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. They had composed a Novena in Honor of St. Isadore, the Patron Saint of Farmers, and this prayer is from that. I figure they should know about praying for rain, so I recommend you use it.
Prayer for Rain
God, in Whom we live and move and have our being, grant us rain in due abundance, that, being sufficiently helped with temporal, we may the more confidently seek after eternal gifts. Through Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
God bless!
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