BLESSED ARE WE: BLACK HISTORY, COVENANT MEMORY, AND A UNITY FAMILY OF PRAYER
- Jan 30
- 4 min read
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them …” (Mt. 5:1-12).
Black history is more than survival. It is a testimony of the covenant. It tells the story of a people carried through generations by memory, song, prayer, and the steady assurance that God has always been near, even when the world tried to deny it. On a Unity Family Day of Prayer, we gather not only to remember where we have been, but to reclaim who we are. We are a people rich in spirit, rooted in faith, and bound together in the sacred circle of life.
In Matthew 5:1–12, Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount with words that speak directly to the Black experience across time. “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” These blessings are not abstract ideas. They are lived realities. Our ancestors knew mourning. They knew meekness forced upon them. They knew hunger, not only for bread, but for justice, dignity, and freedom. Yet Christ declares that God’s favor rests precisely in those places of suffering and longing.
Black history teaches us that faith was never separate from daily life. It was sung in the fields, whispered in prayer meetings, shouted in praise houses, and carried through generations in spirituals that cried out, “Oh Lord, come by here.” Somebody’s praying, Lord. Somebody’s dying, Lord. Somebody’s crying, Lord. Somebody’s being violated, Lord. This was not poetic exaggeration. It was lived theology. Our people understood that prayer was survival. Song became medicine. Lament became worship. Praise became resistance.
A Unity Family Day of Prayer creates sacred space for us to sing our pains out and heal together. Healing does not begin with forgetting. It begins with remembering. We remember the circle of life, the elders who prayed us into being, the children who carry tomorrow’s hope, and the ancestors whose names may be lost to history but never lost to God. We remember that African people everywhere are rich beyond material measure. We are rich in creativity, rhythm, wisdom, resilience, and spiritual insight. These are gifts no empire could erase.
History also warns us of a danger. God’s people suffer most when they forget the covenant. Scripture reminds us that forgetting who we are and whose we are leads to spiritual amnesia. Other cultures and systems may try to separate us from our past, redefining us only by pain, stripping us of dignity, or teaching us to doubt our worth. The Beatitudes confront that lie. Jesus calls the wounded blessed. He calls the persecuted heirs of the kingdom. He declares that those who endure with faith will be comforted, filled, and rewarded.
This day of prayer is a summons to awakening. It calls us to cast out doubt in God’s power, doubt in our purpose, and doubt in the future God has already spoken over us. We declare that the covenant still stands, that the promise still holds, and that the cries of our people have not gone unheard. So we lift our voices and pray, “Oh Lord, come by here.” Come by our homes and our streets. Come by our memories and our wounded places. Come by the praying, dying, crying, and the violated. Heal what has been broken, restore what has been stolen, reignite what has gone dormant within us. Remind us that we are blessed, chosen, and called, a people sustained by grace, sent forward in authority and power.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.
Lift every voice and sing
Author: Gary Johnson is a native of Savannah, GA, currently residing in Omaha, NE. He is a member of St. Benedict the Moor Catholic Church, the only predominantly Black Catholic Church in Nebraska. He is a member of the Parish Council, Youth Ministry, Lector, and Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. Gary is a graduate of Savannah State University. He has recently completed the New Frontiers in Preaching Program at Aquinas Institute of Theology and the Contemporary Black Catholic Spirituality Program at Loyola Marymount University.
The National Day of Prayer for the African American and African Family was created by Fr. James Goode, OFM in 1989. It is a day set aside to give special thanks to God for our families and place our every care in the arms of Jesus. The National Day of Prayer for the African American and African Family Resource Aid contains a catechetical reflection, a prayer specifically for the African American and African Family and some suggested activities to celebrate the day.
Supporters of the National Day of Prayer for the African American and African Family
National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus
USCCB Subcommittee on African American Affairs
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