Dear friends of Gethsemane, peace to you!
We are living dramatic days for what is happening between Russia and Ukraine, and despite a certain apprehension and concern we are invited not to let ourselves be discouraged by evil. We must strengthen our prayer and be determined, united.All of us live the heaviness of the situation that is creating this war, all of us suffer and perceive the bewilderment and the whirlwind of feelings that live our brothers involved in this conflict, for the most part christians. If a member of our body suffers all the members suffer (1Cor 12,26-27), this is the spiritual communion among men made in the image and likeness of God the Creator: We too live the 'scar' that the human brutality of some inflicts on his fellow men. At the same time we can live mutual help by invoking faith, hope and charity for all those who are in trial.We must not give hasty answers to complex questions. There is something much deeper in all this: "Our battle is not against creatures made of blood and flesh, but against the Principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of evil that inhabit the heavenly regions. Take therefore the armor of God..." (Eph 612-13)Perhaps some of you, like us, will ask, "And I, what can I do in the face of all this?" We can pray, live in righteousness, a holy and supportive life, give up something… to offer fruits of love and conversion to the Lord who knows and sees in secret.Last week St James the Apostle said: "Very powerful is the prayer of the righteous made with insistence" (Jas 5:16). We do not consider ourselves perfectly right… but we trust in the holy Church of God in which the Father always listens to his children who invoke him united, we pray and conjure the end of the war also through the powerful intercession of Mary Most Holy, Queen of Peace.May our Lenten journey be lived in prayer and in the strongest union with the Lord Jesus, the only true Saviour of humanity, the only hope of true Peace.
United in prayer.
