Pope: the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity "makes us think about Christ’s love that urges reconciliation"
Francis recalls that the week begins today, he says that "Communion, Reconciliation and Unity are possible. As Christians, we have a responsibility to give this message and we have to bear witness with our lives". "Prayer carries hope and when things are dark more prayer, so there will be even more hope."
Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Pope Francis has invited everyone to pray "that all Christians will return to be one family" in his greetings addressed in almost every language to the groups present at the general audience. Francis wanted to remember today's start of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which, he said in Italian, "this year makes us reflect on the love of Christ that urges reconciliation."
The motto of the week, he commented to the Poles, "is a challenge for us: The love of Christ impels us toward reconciliation. We pray to the Lord - he added - that in every Christian Community, aware of their history, theology and law be ever more open to reconciliation. May a spirit of goodwill and understanding pervade, as well as the desire to work together. "
Among the German groups present was an European ecumenical delegation. In greeting them, Francis said that their stop in Rome is an important ecumenical sign, expressing communion reached through the path of dialogue over the past decades. “The Gospel of Christ is at the center of our lives and unites people who speak different languages, live in different countries and live the faith in different communities. I am moved to remember - he continued - the ecumenical prayer in Lund, Sweden, on 31 October. In the spirit of the joint commemoration of the Reformation, we must look more at what unites us than that which divides us, and we must continue our journey together to deepen our communion and give it an increasingly visible form. In Europe, this common faith in Christ is like a green thread of hope: we belong to each other. Communion, reconciliation and unity are possible. As Christians, we have a responsibility to give this message and we have to bear witness to it with our lives. God bless this desire for union and guard all the people walking on the path to unity ".
The call to pray for unity was repeated by the Pope even in greetings in other languages. In Portuguese, in particular he stated that "the ecumenical movement is bearing fruit, by the grace of God. May the heavenly Father continue to shower His blessings on the footsteps of all His children. Dear brothers and sisters, serve the cause of unity and peace. "
Earlier, in his address to seven thousand people present in the Paul VI, Pope Francis, continuing in the catechesis dedicated to hope, highlighted the relationship between prayer and hope. Prayer "carries hope and when things are dark, more prayer , so there will be even more hope. "
To illustrate this relationship, Francis proposed a biblical figure he described as "a bit abnormal, a prophet who tries to escape the call of the Lord by refusing to accept the divine plan of salvation. This is the prophet Jonah, whose story is told in a little book of only four chapters, a kind of parable that contains a great lesson, that of the mercy of God who forgives. Jonah is an “outgoing” prophet, and also a prophet in flight! He is an outgoing prophet that God sends “to the periphery,” to Nineveh, to convert the inhabitants of that great city. However, for an Israelite like Jonah, Nineveh represented a threatening reality, the enemy that put Jerusalem itself in danger, and therefore to be destroyed, certainly not to be saved. Hence, when God sends Jonah to preach in that city, the prophet, who knows the Lord’s goodness and His desire to forgive, attempts to withdraw from his task and flees. During his flight, the prophet comes into contact with pagans, mariners of the ship on which he embarked to flee from God and from his mission. And he flees far away, because Nineveh was in the region of Iraq and he flees to Spain, he flees in earnest. And it is, in fact, the behavior of these men, as it will be later of the inhabitants of Nineveh, which enables us to reflect somewhat today on hope, which in face of danger and death, is expressed in prayer. In fact, during the crossing of the sea, a mighty tempest breaks out and Jonah goes down to the ship’s hold and abandons himself to sleep. The mariners, instead, seeing themselves lost, “each cried to his god”: they were pagans (Jonah 1:5). The captain of the ship awoke Jonah and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call upon your god. Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we do not perish” (Jonah 1:6).
The reaction of these “pagans” was the right reaction in face of death, in face of danger, because it is then that man has a complete experience of his frailty and his need of salvation. The instinctive horror of dying awakens the necessity to hope in the God of life. “Perhaps the god will give thought to us, that we do not perish”: are the words of hope that becomes prayer, that supplication full of anguish that comes to the lips of man in face of the imminent danger of death. We disdain too easily from turning to God in our need as if it were only a self-interested prayer and, hence, imperfect. However, God knows our weakness, He knows that we remember Him to ask for help, and with the indulgent smile of a father, He responds benevolently. When Jonah, acknowledging his responsibilities, had himself thrown into the sea to save his travel companions, the tempest was placated. Imminent death led those pagan men to prayer and, despite everything, made the prophet live his vocation at the service of others, accepting to sacrifice himself for them, and now leads the survivors to acknowledgement of the true Lord and to praise. The mariners who, prey to fear, turned to their gods and prayed, now, with sincere fear of the Lord, acknowledge the true God and offer sacrifices and make vows. Hope, which had induced them to pray so that they would not die, is now revealed more powerful and operates a reality that goes beyond what they hoped for: not only do they not perish in the tempest, but they open themselves to the acknowledgement of the true and only Lord of Heaven and earth.
Subsequently, the inhabitants of Nineveh, in face of the prospect of being destroyed, also prayed, spurred by hope in God’s forgiveness. They would do penance, invoke the Lord and be converted to Him, beginning with the king, who, like the captain of the ship, gave voice to hope saying: “Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from His fierce anger, so that we perish not?” (Jonah 3:9). For them too, as well as for the crew in the tempest, to have faced death and come out saved led them to the truth. Thus, under divine mercy, and even more so in the light of the Paschal Mystery, death can become, as it was for Saint Francis of Assisi, “our sister death” and represent for every man and for each one of us, the astonishing occasion to know hope and to encounter the Lord. May the Lord make us understand this connection between prayer and hope. Prayer leads one forward in hope and when things become dark, there must be more prayer! And there will be more hope.
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16/01/2022 08:00
