Are you a worrier? Well, there's a devotion for that!
Christ the Worrier is a devotion that reminds us how God identifies with our suffering. As he sits and worries, he contemplates the fears and the sufferings which accompany us during times of uncertainty. Christ the Worrier became a popular devotion in Lithuania, with this figure of the worrying Christ called Rupintojelis (roo-pinto-YAY-lis). Lithuanians relate this figure of Jesus to their own suffering as a people.
The Lithuanians (like so many in Eastern Europe) have had many a good reason to worry. They endured persecution under the Soviet regime with mass deportations to Siberian gulags, where about 60 per cent of the 130,000 Lithuanian deportees died or were never allowed to return to their homes. A photograph of this beautiful statue of Christ the Worrier was given to me by one of the most saintly people I have ever met, Sister Stephen Marie Barney, who was a Poor Sister of Jesus Crucified and the Sorrowful Mother. She died January 9, 2021. (I ask her to pray for me all the time.)
Pray, hope, and don't worry. But if you must worry, turn to Jesus the Worrier.
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