Does Jesus Weep for the Animals too?

I love when anyone writes about Jesus and mentions Mother Teresa, Rumi, St. Francis
and other deeply sensitive people weeping over the condition of the world as did the writer - Bruce Morris in "Jesus Weeps." He is so right. I know that Jesus and they weep for the women who are living, if you can call it that,
under the oppressive hands of arrogant men who
feel that they are gods and can do anything to them as they please. How can any man look on his wife or another woman and consider them
inferior? I know that Jesus and compassionate people weep over this as well as for the hungry and starving of the world --especially the little children with bloated stomachs and sad eyes.

I remember seeing in the 80's a picture of a mother in some part of Africa holding a bony
child and somehow that picture made me feel her pain and I probably wept too. That picture haunted me for a long time. It made me turn to Bread for the World shortly thereafter.

As for us who weep over the famished of the world -- what could we do about it? For one
very big thing, we should try to modify our diets- at least somewhat. Eating meat 3 times a day is taking grain which could be used to
feed the hungry but is used instead to feed cattle. Anyone who is a meat eater will take offense at this, but isn't it true? The wealthy countries use too much of the earth's grain resources to feed their livestock so they can enjoy their steaks, their hamburgers, and their foie gras.

And then for me there is another haunting picture that made me cry at liturgy one morning
after seeing on TV the downed cows of Chino, CA being prodded, pushed, and poked so that greedy owners would squeeze the last ounce of their service to mankind and be slaughtered. One cow hobbled on her knees. That must have been very painful. This picture will always haunt me as does the boy child of Biafra in the 80's. The USDA could not but help to take action and recalled all this meat from this slaughterhouse which naturally would go out of business. They acted because Congress passed a law which forbade the use of Downed Cows for fear of mad cow disease.

Aren't some of us as arrogant towards the animals as the men who mistreat their wives and
consider them unworthy of respect? Do they deserve respect? In my humble opinion anything
which God has made deserves respect. I want to shout to the silent churches including my
own Catholic church - look at what probably Christian men did to those poor mother cows
who gave of themselves for years in less than comfortable conditions - giving you milk, butter,
and cheese and even now -instead of finally allowing them to retire to a grassy meadow - you
force them on their knees to go through the slaughter line. I am angry at the churches
because they have not taught compassion for the animals. Have you ever heard it in your
church? Maybe the Episcopalians do- I don't know.

Of course, I believe that Jesus weeps for his animal creatures as well as St. Francis, Rumi,
and others. I read that Rumi, a Muslim teacher who taught restraint and penance was observed
once taking a tray of food to an undisclosed place. His followers began to think he was
a hypocrite until they followed him to a cave where he brought food for a hungry nursing mother
dog. This also made me cry - though with tears of joy at his great compassion to a
"lesser" being. How sad that we categorize. There are no lesser beings in my opinion because we were all fashioned by the loving hand of God.

Story ID:	4147
Written by:	Suzana Margaret Megles (bio, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Musings, Essays and Such
Location:	? ? USA
Year:	2008
Person:	various