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Church
leaders on the Middle East Crisis:
Wenski,
Lajolo,
Sodano,
the pope
Faced with violence such as that in Lebanon, in which religious
differences play a significant role, one temptation for believers is
to retreat into a kind of vague humanitarian language, soft-pedaling
any confessional approach for fear of making things worse. Some
believers worry that striking spiritual notes while the world burns
flirts with naiveté; as Woody Allen once put it, if there really is a
God, the best that can be said of him is that he¡¦s an under-achiever.
Benedict XVI understands all this. Yet at bottom, he does not buy the
premise that a time of crisis should imply a gag order on the gospel.
On the contrary, he believes, only its message is capable of
offering the world a different path.
His comments during his homily
on Sunday, July 23, the day he set aside for prayer and penance for
Lebanon, are eloquent testimony of
the point.
The pope said:
¡K Today in a
multi-cultural and multi-religious world, many are tempted to say:
"It¡¦s better for peace in the world among the religions and the
cultures not to speak too much of the specificity of Christianity,
that is, of Jesus, of the church, of the sacraments. Let¡¦s be content
with those things which can be more or less universal ¡K" But it¡¦s not
true. Precisely in this moment -- in a moment of great abuse of the
name of God -- we need the God who triumphs on the Cross, who
wins not with violence but WITH HIS LOVE. Precisely in
this moment we need the face of
Christ, to know the true face of God and thereby
to carry reconciliation and light to this world. Thus together WITH
LOVE, with the message OF LOVE, with all that we can do for the
suffering of this world, we must also carry the witness of
this God,
of the victory of God precisely through the
non-violence of his Cross.
Let¡¦s return to where we began. What we can do is to render the
witness of love, the witness of faith; above all we can raise a cry to
God: we can pray! We are sure that our Father hears the cry of his
children. In the Mass, preparing ourselves for Holy Communion, to
receive the Body of Christ that unites us, we pray with the church:
"Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and give us peace in our day." Let
this be the prayer of the church in this moment: "Deliver us from
every evil and give us peace." Not tomorrow or the day after: Lord,
peace today! Amen.
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From National Catholic Reporter 2006 07
28
http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/word072806.htm#four
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