April 9, 2026

After spending two weeks in rural Puerto Rico, yesterday I went to centering prayer practice.  In prayer, I saw Jesus with an amulet on his upper right arm and in the attire of a Taimo indigenous person of Puerto Rico. Jesus was showing his solidarity and identity with the people of Puerto Rico and with all Black and brown people of this world. He also commended the sincere devotion and genuinely longing hearts of the Puerto Rican lay people who worship God in the Catholic church. We northerners have much to learn from them.

Then he showed me his further identification with the people of the Middle East, the women and children, the men and women subjected to the bombs (regardless of country). He reminded me that in his human life on earth, he was himself a Middle Easterner, a man with brown skin. Christ’s body is one with the masses of the poor and oppressed.  When one of those people is killed by a bomb, he feels like one of his own fingers has been blown off.

It has been said many times, Jesus stands with the poor and oppressed.  That is all.