WORLD PEACE BEGINS WITH US
Dear friends of Gethsemane, the Lord gives you his peace!
The mass media, at this time, use the typical dramatic and sensational narrative, emotional, inevitably creating a perspective, sometimes imprecise, confusing and biased. Our situation is getting more complicated, especially now in the north. There are things and events that go beyond our comprehension. In every war we are all losers! We realize that there is a war that makes noise, and there is one, more silent, which is more dangerous and poisonous, when it enters the heart, leads to suspicion, prejudice, fear towards those who live next door. There are no easy answers to complex situations, they require time, depth; we cannot have a naive look at the reality that we live. We know, in the depths, that evil is raging and wants to scar all of us, children of God! We should have more and more a look of faith and read, among the plots of the story, who are the true actors! "The answer of God to human suffering that we are living is the Lord Jesus in Gethsemane, it is his Presence". Disarming is the statement of our Christians in Gaza that at the visit of the Patriarch, Cardinal P. Pizzaballa, in a simple and unorganized way, they gave this beautiful testimony: "We do not have hatred in our blood!".
Wounded, with nothing, locked in certain spaces, but with a free heart! Moving and disarming!
In accordance with this wounded humanity, we, the sons of Francis, on last 17 September, commemorated the 800-year anniversary of the gift of the stigmata of Saint Francis, received as "seal of the Most High" at La Verna (Arezzo, Italy). Francis' life was the witness of a man of peace, and still today represents for all of us a great provocation: from being misunderstood by his own brothers to being consoled and understood by God; from confused and lost, to "fused" and found again by God. A continuous passage: from being wounded by man to being "wounded" by Love. The divinity of God has entered into his flesh and his flesh is already joined with the Lord: the Word of God, Jesus Christ! This mystery, through his experience, presents itself and still comes to us today, provoking and challenging us. A faith lived in the body: 800 years! We too are of the same flesh as Saint Francis and Saint Clare, and the Lord is the same one who spoke to these saints! Their faith, and our faith, concretely, converge towards the same face that has loved us immensely: Jesus Christ!
If God wills, there will be a small delegation of the Tuscan friars who will bring with them the relic of the blood of Saint Francis stigmatized and recognize once again, the places where we were born, the Rock of our salvation. Let us ask the Lord to share in this mystery of love, by giving our willingness to become men and women of peace, inhabited by peace, 'inhabited' by Christ! How we would like there to be this peace in the world... The world, we can’t change it, but with the grace of God, so much faith and constancy we can change ourselves first.
If God wills, the visit of the Relic of the blood of Saint Francis will be transmitted via streaming (see the site of ‘Chistian MediaCenter’).
United in prayer for peace, we ask with insistence this gift to the Lord through the intercession of the Queen of Peace.
May the Lord bless you
