Aid to the Church in Need
Crossing the threshold of hope
The Way to Peace 14 - 5
NOCK OUSE OTEL
KNOCK HOUSE HOTEL
Fr. Michael Shields, ACN (Ireland’s) Siberian-based Evangelist-at-large will be returning to Ireland October 2014 to celebrate the Eucharist preach the Word of God administer the Sacrament of Reconciliation, sing the Joy of the Gospel and share the Hope that is within him.
From Friday 17th to Sunday 19th October 2014 in Knock House Hotel Fr. Michael will lead a residential programme of prayer, reflections and recreational activities which will assist participants: deepen their appreciation of the Gospel of Joy and Hope and equip them to better share their joy and their hope within their families, among their friends and in their communities.
Aid to the Church in Need
Contents
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Crossing the Threshold of Hope, the Way to Peace - J F Declan Quinn .......... 2 Transforming Hearts - the Way to Peace - Fr. Martin Barta
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Let us open our Hearts to the Holy Spirit - Pope Francis ............................... 8 Revealing the radiant face of Jesus - Pope Francis ....................................... 12 Look to the Child - Pope Francis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....................................... 14 Strengthening the Way of Peace - Pope Francis
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Remember us in your Mercy, O Lord - Pope Francis
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Dialogue and forgiveness are the goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........................................ 20 Good priests are the foundation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........................................ 22 Places of God’s answering Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........................................ 24 Can Christianity survive the persecution - Cardinal Mauro Piacenza ............ 26 Be Missionaries of Joy - Benedict XVI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....................................... 28 Going the extra mile... and then some - J F Declan Quinn............................ 38 God’s first love - Johannes Freiherr Heereman . . . . . . . ........................................ 40 2013 Report ............ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........................................ 42
Editor: Jürgen Liminski. Publisher: Kirche in Not / Ostpriesterhilfe, Postfach 1209, 61452 Königstein, Germany. De licentia competentis auctoritatis ecclesiasticae. Printed in Ireland - ISSN 0252-2535. www.acn-intl.org
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Crossing the Threshold of Hope, the Way to Peace A chairde, n May 2014 Aid to the Church in Need opened its office in Malta with an international conference on Religious freedom centred on the theme of ‘Can Christianity survive the Persecution?’ An excellent line-up of speakers were drawn from the frontlines of the persecuted church in the Middle East and Africa and the quality of the presentations and discussions was exceptional in terms of moral seriousness, depth and being hope-filled. To have participated in the conference was to have experienced the Church as the mystical body of Christ and as Hope for our deeply fragmented world.
Bishop Kryillos, of Assuit, Egypt speaking at the conference.
That our world is fragmented and indeed rapidly fragmenting is in no doubt, one has simply to take note of the daily news headlines. But these alone don’t tell the whole story of how all over the world individuals, families and communities are suffering physically, morally and economically.
Cardinal Piacenza, ACN President, leads a march for persecuted Christians, Valetta, Malta
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es the persecution facing Christians throughout the world and particularly in Asia and Africa is real and growing. Yes the economic suffering and hardship facing Christians in these and other lands is also real and growing but it is also true that in the so-called developed Western world the faith of Christians and Christian families is being continuously tested by aggressive secularism and consumerist indifference. Today Christianity is under relentless attack from false gods and the denial of God. Moreover in our country and throughout the formerly Christian Western world, a strong case can be made that Christianity is currently losing this culture war. his of course need not be the case and while ultimately it will not be the case it does raise a question as to what you and I as people of faith are expected to do in the face of the civilisational crisis confronting us in our own homes, in our own country and in today’s global reality.
Patriarch Gregorios III of Antioch, Syria with ACN Ireland President Donal O’Siochain
And lest one doubt the reality of the civilisational crisis confronting us let one simply look around one’s own family and friends and note the extent of marital breakdown, family feuding, the widespread extent of addictions (all types), of boredom, of meaninglessness and anxieties. In our ‘brave new world’ the rapid globalisation
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of our economies has been accompanied by an equally rapid fragmentation of our societies, our families, our own sense of personal identity and even what it means to be a fully human being. he fact is that our prodigal world is in a deep state of crisis and more than it realises, or wishes to realise, if it wishes avoid the threat of endless conflict (micro and macro) and walk the path of peace (personal and collective) it needs to engage (re-engage) with the Catholic understanding of the human condition: every human being has been created in the image and likeness of God and has been called forth by name. Each of us has a God-given right to life, a mission to fulfil and the talents required to do so. Bishop Kaigama (Nigeria), Sister Hanan (Lebanon) with ACN Ireland President Donal O’Siochain.
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Cardinal Piacenza, ACN President, concelebrating Mass for Persecuted Christians
All of us, whatever our age, our socioeconomic condition, our physiological or mental condition have the God-given right to life and the moral obligation to fully become the person we were created to be.
Available to read online or download for free from acnireland.org
Yes while God has created each of us by name ‘to do Him some definite service’1 he has called all of us at the same time to participate in one uniuni versal service: we are all called t o become missionaries, missionaries of Peace, Missionaries of Joy2 and Witnesses of Hope to our families, friends, communities and the world-at-large. We are all called in our weakness and inadequacy to become witnesses to the hope which is within us’3, to become ‘Instruments of God’s Peace’4. et us pray for the grace we need to hear God’s call to become Missionaries of Joy and to lovingly respond to it. In this way together with Christians of all times and in all places we will not alone endure our sufferings and survive our persecutions but in Crossing the Threshold of Hope will transcend them for the greater glory of God and His kingdom. Beir Beannacht
J F Declan Quinn Director, Aid to the Church in Need (Ireland) 1 Blessed John H Newman: Meditations on Christian Doctrine Part III 2 Pope Benedict XVI: Message for the Twenty-Seventh World Youth Day 2012, 15 March 2012 3 1 Peter 3:15, ‘But sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you.’ 4 Cf. St. Francis of Assisi, ‘Make me an instrument of Your peace’.
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Transforming Hearts the way to peace Dear Friends, n my mind’s eye I can still see the young men crowded in the chapel – some of them with tattoos and piercings – joyfully singing the Hosannas of the Palm Sunday liturgy with all their heart. In them I saw an image of the triumph of the love of Christ, which can touch and transform even the hardest of hearts. It was an enduring Easter miracle!
their own fault, they made a ruin of their early lives. Only a miracle, like a resurrection from the dead, could have saved them. For them, the Fazenda was indeed the last hope. The founder of the Fazendas, the Franciscan priest Frei Hans, explained to us that in the first few weeks there is just one thing the new arrivals have to learn – to forgive.
This step is absolutely There in the Fazenda indispensable if their ‘The one who shows da Esperança – the journey of healing is to mercy makes his life into ‘Farm of Hope’ in go any further. Their a gift for all.’ Brazil I was able to own guilt and the guilt of witness the joy of the others, which more often resurrection for myself. The 120 young than not goes back deep into their family former addicts living here in the community life, often seems insurmountable. have not had happy lives before coming. hose who come knocking on the Generally speaking, through helplessdoors of the Fazenda bearing such ness, and at least to some extent through deep wounds are usually burnt out and more often than not close to giving up entirely on themselves and their future. Only through prayer, the Sacraments and the love they find within the community are they able to discover the strength to forgive and so find healing and salvation. One of the young men told me how his father had made his life hell and how he had felt nothing but a deep hatred towards him. For 20 years there was no contact of any kind between them. After the first few weeks at the Fazenda he was able to write 6
a four-page letter to his father, forgiving him. ‘This reconciliation’, he told me, with tears in his eyes, ‘was an unexpected gift to myself – even before the letter reached my father. I felt the closeness of Jesus within me and the strength of his mercy and I realised: Jesus has carried my own guilt and my own cross for me.’ oday his father comes to visit his son every month. And now he wants to live with his son on the Fazenda and help other young people. Forgiveness opens our eyes to the mystery of our redemption. It bears within it the desire to wipe out even the most terrible guilt and it is willing even to take upon itself the suffering caused by this guilt. The one who shows mercy makes his life into a gift for all. This is the mystery that the young people come to know on the Fazendas. And so they are the ones who later strengthen others and raise them up. ACN actively supports and promotes the mission and work of the fazendas. Thank you, dear friends, for being a part of this wonderful plan of divine mercy and helping to fill so many hearts with the spirit of peace and reconciliation. With my grateful blessing on you all
Father Martin M. Barta, Spiritual Assistant Aid to the Church in Need
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Let us open our Hearts to the Holy Spirit - Pope Francis5 he empty tomb, that new garden grave where Joseph of Arimathea had reverently placed Jesus’ body, is the place from which the proclamation of the Resurrection begins: ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead”’ (Mt 28:5-7). This proclamation, confirmed by the testimony of those to whom the risen Lord appeared, is the heart of the Christian message, faithfully passed down from generation to generation, as the Apostle Paul, from the very beginning, bears witness: ‘I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was
Joseph of Arimathea
buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures’ (1 Cor 15:3-4). This is the basis of the faith which unites us, whereby together we profess that Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father and our sole Lord, ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead’ (Apostles’ Creed). Each of us, everyone baptised in Christ, has spiritually risen from this tomb, for in baptism all of us truly became members of the body of the One who is the Firstborn of all creation; we were buried together with him, so as to be raised up with him and to walk in newness of life (cf. Rom 6:4). 5 Address of Pope Francis, joint service with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, 25 May 2014.
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We pause in reverent silence before … (the) empty tomb in order to rediscover the grandeur of our Christian vocation: we are men and women of resurrection, and not of death. From this place we learn how to live our lives, the trials of our Churches and of the whole world, in the light of Easter morning. very injury, every one of our pains and sorrows, has been borne on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd who offered himself in sacrifice and thereby opened the way to eternal life. His open wounds are the cleft through which the torrent of his mercy is poured out upon the world. • Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of the basis of our hope! • Let us not deprive the world of the joyful message of the resurrection! And
• let us not be deaf to the powerful summons to unity which rings out from this very place, in the words of the One who, risen from the dead, calls all of us ‘my brothers’ (cf. Mt 28:10; Jn 20:17). Clearly we cannot deny the divisions which continue to exist among…the disciples of Jesus. …and yet, …it…(is) possible, at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, to take truly significant steps towards unity. We know that much distance still needs to be travelled before we attain that fullness of communion which can also be expressed by sharing the same Eucharistic table, something we ardently desire; yet our disagreements must not frighten us and paralyse our progress. We need to believe that, just as the stone before the tomb was cast aside, so too
Pope Francis presides over Mass at Amman International Stadium, Jordan. 25th May 2014.
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every obstacle to our full communion will also be removed. This will be a grace of resurrection, of which we can have a foretaste even today. • Every time we ask forgiveness of one another for our sins against other Christians and every time we find the courage to grant and receive such forgiveness, we experience the resurrection! • Every time we put behind us our longstanding prejudices and find the courage to build new fraternal relationships, we confess that Christ is truly risen! • Every time we reflect on the future of the Church in the light of her vocation to unity, the dawn of Easter breaks forth! …Standing as pilgrims in these holy places, we also remember in our prayers the entire Middle East, so frequently and lamentably marked by acts of violence and conflict. or do we forget in our prayers the many other men and women who in various parts of our world are suffering from war, poverty and hunger, as well as the many Christians who are persecuted for their faith in the risen Lord. When Christians of different confessions suffer together, side by side, and assist one another with fraternal charity, there is born an ecumenism of suffering, an ecumenism of blood, which proves particularly powerful not only for those situations in which it occurs, but also, by 10
virtue of the communion of the saints, for the whole Church as well. et us put aside the misgivings we have inherited from the past and open our hearts to the working of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love (cf. Rom 5:5) and of truth (cf. Jn 16:13), in order to hasten together towards that blessed day when our full communion will be restored. In making this journey, we feel ourselves sustained by the prayer which Jesus himself, in this city, on the eve of his passion, death and resurrection, offered to the Father for his disciples. It is a prayer which we ourselves in humility never tire to make our own: ‘that they may all be one… that the world may believe’ (Jn 17:21). •
Blessed John H Newman6 od has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission - I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. omehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his - if, indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. e has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.
herefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. y sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me - still He knows what He is about.
6 Blessed John H Newman: Meditations on Christian Doctrine Part III
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Revealing the radiant face of Jesus - Pope Francis7 oming to the Jordan to be baptised by John, Jesus showed his humility and his participation in our human condition. He stooped down to us and by his love he restored our dignity and brought us salvation. Jesus’ humility never fails to move us, the fact that he bends down to wounded humanity in order to heal us. For our part, we are profoundly affected by the tragedies and suffering of our times, particularly those caused by ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. I think particularly of Syria, rent by nearly three years of civil strife which has led to countless deaths and forced millions to flee and seek exile in other countries. • I thank the Jordanian authorities and people for the generous welcome they have extended to the immense number of refugees from Syria and Iraq. • I also thank all those who offer them assistance and solidarity. • I think too of the charitable work undertaken by Church institutions… who assist the needy regardless of their religious beliefs, ethnic origin or politics; in this way they reveal the radiant face of Jesus, full of kindness and love. May the Almighty and Merciful God bless all of you and every effort you make to alleviate the sufferings caused by war! 7 Address of Pope Francis, meeting with refugees and disabled youth, bethany beyond the Jordan, 24 May 2014
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May the violence cease and may humanitarian law be respected, thus ensuring much needed assistance to those who are suffering! May all parties abandon the attempt to resolve issues by the use of arms and return to negotiations. A solution will only be found... • through dialogue and restraint, • through compassion for those who suffer, • through the search for a political solution and • through a sense of fraternal responsibility. ask you to join me in praying for peace. You can do this by offering your daily efforts and struggles to God; in this way your prayer will become particularly precious and effective. also encourage you to assist, through your generosity and sensitivity, in building a society which is respectful of the vulnerable, the sick, children and the elderly. May God change the hearts of the violent and those who seek war. And may he strengthen the hearts and minds of peacemakers and grant them every blessing. •
Make me an instrument of Your peace by St Francis of Assisi
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ord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
here there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy.
O
, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
F
or it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.
Amen Aid to the Church in Need
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Look to the Child - Pope Francis8 he Child Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is the sign given by God to those who awaited salvation, and he remains forever the sign of God’s tenderness and presence in our world. The angel announces to the shepherds: ‘This will be a sign for you: you will find a child…’ Today too, children are a sign. They are a sign of hope, a sign of life, but also a ‘diagnostic’ sign, a marker indicating the health of families, society and the entire world. Wherever children are accepted, loved, cared for and protected, the family is healthy, society is more healthy and the world is more human. …To us, the men and women of the twenty-first century, God today also says: ‘This will be a sign for you’, look to the child…
The Child of Bethlehem is frail, like all newborn children. He cannot speak and yet he is the Word made flesh who came to transform the hearts and lives of all men and women. This Child, like every other child, is vulnerable; he needs to be accepted and protected. Today too, children need to be welcomed and defended, from the moment of their conception. adly, in this world, with all its highly developed technology, • great numbers of children continue to live in inhuman situations, on the fringes of society, in the peripheries of great cities and in the countryside. • All too many children continue to be exploited, maltreated, enslaved, prey to violence and illicit trafficking. • Still too many children live in exile, as refugees, at times lost at sea, particularly in the waters of the Mediterranean. oday, in acknowledging this, we feel shame before God, before God who became a child.
Pope Francis at traditional site of Jesus’ Baptism in Bethany, Jordan 14
And we have to ask ourselves: • Who are we, as we stand before the Child Jesus? • Who are we, standing as we stand before today’s children? • Are we like Mary and Joseph, who welcomed Jesus and care for him with the love of a father and a mother? Or 8 Homily of Pope Francis, Manger Square Bethlehem, 25 May 2014
• Are we like Herod, who wanted to eliminate him? • Are we like the shepherds, who went in haste to kneel before him in worship and offer him their humble gifts? Or • Are we indifferent? • Are we perhaps people who use fine and pious words, yet exploit pictures of poor children in order to make money? • Are we ready to be there for children, to ‘waste time’ with them? • Are we ready to listen to them, to care for them, to pray for them and with them? Or • Do we ignore them because we are too caught up in our own affairs? ‘This will be a sign for us: you will find a child…’. Perhaps that little boy or girl is crying. He is crying because he is hungry, because she is cold, because he or she wants to be picked up and held in our arms… oday too, children are crying, they are crying a lot, and their crying challenges us. In a world which daily discards tons of food and medicine there are children, hungry and suffering from easily curable diseases, who cry out in vain. In an age which insists on the protection of minors, • there is a flourishing trade in weapons which end up in the hands of childsoldiers, • there is a ready market for goods produced by the slave labor of small children.
Their cry is stifled: the cry of these children is stifled! They must fight, they must work, they cannot cry! But their mothers cry for them, as modern-day Rachels: they weep for their children, and they refuse to be consoled (cf. Mt 2:18). ‘This will be a sign for you’: you will find a child. The Child Jesus, born in Bethlehem, every child who is born and grows up in every part of our world, is a diagnostic sign indicating the state of health of our families, our communities, our nation. Such a frank and honest diagnosis can lead us to a new kind of lifestyle where our relationships are no longer marked by conflict, oppression and consumerism, but fraternity, forgiveness and reconciliation, solidarity and love. •
Mary, Mother of Jesus, You who accepted, Teach us how to accept; You who adored, Teach us how to adore; You who followed, Teach us how to follow.
Amen
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Strengthening the Way of Peace - Pope Francis9 esus promised the disciples… ‘I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you forever’ (Jn 14:16) ….(Meditating) on the Holy Spirit and on all that he has brought about in Christ and in us … we can say that the Holy Spirit carries out three actions – • He prepares, • He anoints and • He sends. At the baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus to prepare him for his mission of salvation, the mission of one who is a Servant, humble and meek, ready to share and give himself completely. Yet the Holy Spirit, present from the beginning of salvation history, had already been at work in Jesus from the moment of his conception in the virginal womb of Mary of Nazareth, by bringing about the wondrous event of the Incarnation: ‘the Holy Spirit will come upon you, will overshadow you – the Angel said to Mary – and you will give birth to a son who will be named Jesus’ (cf. Lk 1:35). he Holy Spirit had then acted in Simeon and Anna on the day of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple (cf. Lk 2:22). Both were awaiting the Messiah, and both were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Simeon and Anna, upon seeing the child, knew immediately that he was the 9 Homily of Pope Francis, Amman International Stadium, Amman, Jordan, 24 May 2014
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one long awaited by the people. They gave prophetic expression to the joy of encountering the Redeemer and, in a certain sense, served as a preparation for the encounter between the Messiah and the people. These various works of the Holy Spirit are part of a harmonious action, a sole divine plan of love. The mission of the Holy Spirit, in fact, is to beget harmony – he is himself harmony – and to create peace in different situations and between different people. iversity of ideas and persons should not trigger rejection or prove an obstacle, for variety always enriches. So today, with fervent hearts, we invoke the Holy Spirit and ask him to prepare the path to peace and unity. The Holy Spirit also anoints. He anointed Jesus inwardly and he anoints his disciples, so that they can have the mind of Christ and thus be disposed to live lives of peace and communion. Through the anointing of the Spirit, our human nature is sealed with the holiness of Jesus Christ and we are enabled to love our brothers and sisters with the same love which God has for us. We ought, therefore, to show concrete signs of • • • •
humility, fraternity, forgiveness and reconciliation.
These signs are the prerequisite of a true, stable and lasting peace. Let us ask the Father to anoint us so that we • may fully become his children, ever more conformed to Christ, and • may learn to see one another as brothers and sisters. Thus, by putting aside our grievances and divisions, we can show fraternal love for one another. This is what Jesus asks of us in the Gospel: ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you for ever’ (Jn 14:15-16). astly, the Holy Spirit sends. Jesus is the one who is sent forth, filled with the Spirit of the Father. Anointed by the same Spirit, we also are sent as mes-
Pope Francis presides over Mass at Amman International Stadium, Jordan.
sengers and witnesses of peace. The world has much need of us as messengers of peace, witnesses of peace! The world needs this. The world asks us to bring peace and to be a sign of peace. Peace is not something which can be bought or sold; peace is a gift to be sought patiently and to be ‘crafted’ through the actions, great and small, of our everyday lives. The way of peace is strengthened • if we realise that we are all of the same stock and members of the one human family; • if we never forget that we have the same Father in heaven and that we are all his children, made in his image and likeness. he Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the Jordan and thus inaugurated his work of redemption to free the world from sin and death. • Let us ask the Spirit to prepare our hearts to encounter our brothers and sisters, so that we may overcome our differences rooted in political thinking, language, culture and religion. • Let us ask him to anoint our whole being with the oil of his mercy, which heals the injuries caused by mistakes, misunderstandings and disputes. And • let us ask him for the grace to send us forth, in humility and meekness, along the demanding but enriching path of seeking peace. •
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Remember us in your Mercy, O Lord - Pope Francis10 dam, where are you?’ (cf. Gen 3:9). Where are you, o man? What have you come to? In this place, this memorial of the Shoah, we hear God’s question echo once more: ‘Adam, where are you?’ This question is charged with all the sorrow of a Father who has lost his child. The Father knew the risk of freedom; he knew that his children could be lost… yet perhaps not even the Father could imagine so great a fall, so profound an abyss! Here, before the boundless tragedy of the Holocaust, That cry – ‘Where are you?’ – echoes like a faint voice in an unfathomable abyss… Adam, who are you? I no longer recognise you. Who are you, O man? What have you become? Of what horror have you been capable? What made you fall to such depths?
Certainly it is not the dust of the earth from which you were made. The dust of the earth is something good, the work of my hands. Certainly it is not the breath of life which I breathed into you. That breath comes from me, and it is something good (cf. Gen 2:7). o, this abyss is not merely the work of your own hands, your own heart… Who corrupted you? Who disfigured you? Who led you to presume that you are the master of good and evil? Who convinced you that you were god? Not only did you torture and kill your brothers and sisters, but you sacrificed them to yourself, because you made yourself a god. 10 Address of Pope Francis, Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, Jerusalem, 26 May 2014
Pope Francis at the Western Wall, Jerusalem
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oday, in this place, we hear once more the voice of God: ‘Adam, where are you?’ From the ground there rises up a soft cry: ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord!’ To you, O Lord our God, belongs righteousness; but to us confusion of face and shame (cf. Bar 1:15). A great evil has befallen us, such as never happened under the heavens (cf. Bar 2:2). Now, Lord, hear our prayer, hear our plea, save us in your mercy. Save us from this horror. lmighty Lord, a soul in anguish cries out to you. Hear, Lord, and have mercy! We have sinned against you. You reign for ever (cf. Bar 3:1-2). Remember us in your mercy. Grant us the grace to be ashamed of what we men have done, to be ashamed of this massive idolatry, of having despised and destroyed our own flesh which you formed from the earth, to which you gave life with your own breath of life. Never again, Lord, never again! ‘Adam, where are you?’ Here we are, Lord, shamed by what man, created in your own image and likeness, was capable of doing. emember us in your mercy O Lord. • Aid to the Church in Need
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Dialogue and forgiveness are the goal ove is proved in faithfulness and perfected in forgiveness.’ That is easy to say... But how is a mother or father to forgive the murderer of their child, or the man who raped their daughter or granddaughter? The trauma of war can burden the soul, often for an entire lifetime. The sisters of the congregation of the ‘Adorers of the Blood of Christ’ in Banja Luka, Bosnia, are trying to help heal the wounds. ‘If you do not have the strength to forgive, then leave it in the hands of Jesus. He will forgive in your place.’ After a long conversation, words of counsel such as these can eventually bring peace to ravaged souls. In their pastoral outreach to the war victims and returning refugees, the sisters seek the advice of psychologists, psychia-
trists and priests. In the New Nazareth Convent where they live, they organise meetings for all who suffered, whether they stayed behind, were forced to flee or were otherwise traumatised. In conversations in which they can often do no more than listen, they help victims to come to terms with the past. hey provide times of prayer and silence, and workshops with psychological professionals. They make it possible to forgive, and they heal what has been wounded. In this way reconciliation can come about. We are helping with travel costs, food and the logistics of this programme. On a different scale altogether is the work for the future. The John Paul II Youth Pastoral Centre in Sarajevo is now in an advanced stage of construction. It will Healing through love and prayer – sisters and helpers in Banja Luka.
Room for all – the youth centre in Sarajevo.
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cost €1.3 million - and we are helping with €205,000. This is also a place of reconciliation, where young Christians and Muslims will continue to meet together in dialogue - as they are already doing today. It also includes a Catholic chapel. Father Simo Marsic, the director of the centre, explains: ‘When the young people know their own faith, then they know how to go out to others. The Gospel opens us up to others, and we are no longer afraid.’ ikewise joyful in his faith and free from fear, for years Father Sebastiano has been promoting dialogue and reconciliation with the Muslims on Mindanao in the Philippines. While his work means he now needs a bodyguard, it is yielding results. One senior Muslim official took part on his courses, and his initiative has now become the largest interreligious forum in the entire region.
Next year the Church in the Philippines will be celebrating the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christianity here. This has inspired Father Sebastian and his team to launch a three-year programme. They train the laity to engage in dialogue in the workplace; they organise 12-day courses for catechists, with 50 participants each time; they invite young people and those embarking on the world of work to participate in a 24-hour prayer session called a ‘powerhouse of silence’; they hand out pamphlets and brochures. The central theme for this year is the basic principles of faith and morals. 2015 will focus on Catholic social teaching and the mission for the poor, while 2016 will be devoted to the Eucharist and the family. There are many different ways of proclaiming the Faith, and witness and dialogue are among the preconditions. •
Everyday life on Mindanao, in the Philippines – slums, mosque, chapel, soldier.
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Good priests are the foundation or the Church, Africa is a continent of hope. Nowhere else is the Catholic faith growing faster, nowhere else are there so many vocations – and these are the key to this spiritual strength. At the same time, however, nowhere is the material need greater than in the countries of this continent.
says. Similarly, for many of the other 152 seminarians in the seminary of Mbujimayi in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it was the ‘lifestyle’, the ‘reverence in celebrating Holy Mass’, the ‘uprightness and honesty’, the ‘joyfulness’ and also the strength of the priests in ‘proclaiming the Word’ that kindled their calling.
The most common reason given for the wealth of vocations in Africa is the good example of the priests in the parishes. Isai wanted to be either a priest, a doctor or an officer. ‘It was the example of my parish priest that led me to the seminary’, he
Others felt the call of God when reading the Scriptures. The year before there were only 116 seminarians. But the training of these young men to become exemplary priests costs more money than Bishop Bernard Kasanda Mulenga can afford. n October Archbishop Pascal N’Koué of Parakou, in Benin, is planning to establish a seminary for the vocations in the area, particularly among the rural population. It is here that the sects are growing rapidly. We are helping him with the construction of this modest building.
Some 50 kilometres (about 30 miles) after Monrovia, the Liberian capital, the asphalted civilisation comes to an end, and the swamps and jungle take over. Without a robust, all-terrain vehicle, there would be no way for Father Melvin and his vocations team from the diocese of Cape Palmas to reach the Catholic faithful and the many catechumens here. We have promised to help him obtain a suitable vehicle – so that he can battle through the mud.
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New life – Baptism in the Abbé Ngidi seminary, Boma, D.R.Congo.
Meanwhile, in the diocese of Fenoarivo-Atsinanana in Madagascar,, where Christians make up just 2% of the population, all the people are helping to support the 107 seminarians. Nevertheless, they still need your generosity. ‘An intellectual, spiritual, human and pastoral formation – these are the four pillars of formation’, Pope Francis teaches us. Thanks to you, the seminaries in Africa can build on these pillars. •
The good seed – seminarians in Fenoarivo help to feed the geese.
Frans van der Lugt - Martyr year ago, we wrote in the Mirror: ‘Those who are hanging on in Homs, like Father Frans van der Lugt, are staring martyrdom in the face. “We are not thinking of martyrdom”, says Father Frans, when we manage to get through to him on the phone. “We are trying to find solutions for the most urgent needs”.’ And that is exactly what he did do, thanks to your help – until he was finally martyred on 7 April this year. Islamic extremists dragged the 75-yearold Jesuit priest out onto the street and shot him dead. For over 50 years he had borne witness to the love of Christ among the suffering people in Syria – most recently in the embattled city of
Homs, where he stayed behind with the last dozen or so Christians, while telling us, ‘I do not see Muslims or Christians, but only human beings. I am the only priest and the only foreigner in this place, but I do not feel like a stranger.’ Now he is truly at home.
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Places of God’s answering Presence hy build chapels and churches? Can we not simply pray outside among nature? ‘Of course we can’, says Benedict XVI. ‘But then the initiative in praying comes from us alone – and then God’s answer cannot be taken for granted. But the Eucharist means that God has already answered. The Eucharist is God as answering Presence. Therefore, prayer in the context of the Eucharistic space reaches an entirely new level.’ That is what really matters. That the faithful can gather around the ‘answering Presence’ of the Lord. In Bariis Cabid-an, close to the city of Sorsogon in the Philippines, the congregation is large – too large for the little chapel of the Poor Clare Sisters. For 20 years now these contem-
Hope for the Holy Land – Corpus Christi with the seminarians of Beit Jala.
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plative Sisters have been praying here in this chapel, and their prayerful presence has made this place, as Bishop Arturo Mandin Bastes writes, into a place of witness to Christ in the world. The number of pilgrims who come to pray with them is growing constantly, and on Sundays and feast days many have to stand outside, often in the rain. First one, and now two outside awnings are still not enough to shelter them – least of all when storms and natural disasters turn the chapel into a refuge for the homeless. So now the chapel, the sheltering mantle of the Lord, needs to be – indeed, absolutely has to be – enlarged. or 55 years they have been praying in the parish of Our Lady of Fatima in Boni, Burkina Faso, and throughout this time they have longed for a chapel in the outstation in the village of Kopoye. They even scraped together some funding and began to build up the walls themselves. mateBut then the money for the building mate rials ran out. Since then this house of the Lord has stood there, unfinished, without intera roof, without windows, without inter nal plastering. It still stands there, in the middle of nowhere, it seems, in the midst of the wilderness. Now we have promised them the money they still need – so that this empty space may truly become a place of the Eucharistic Presence of the Lord.
‘It is the priest who brings God down from heaven’, said the holy Curé of Ars. Indeed, without the priest there can be no Eucharistic Presence. That is why the seminaries are the precursors of the churches. In Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, stands the one and only Latin rite seminary of the Catholic Church in the whole of the Middle East.
Not only in the Philippines, in Burkina Faso and in the Holy Land, but also in Europe, Latin America and Australia you are helping to construct or complete places of peace and Eucharistic Presence. In doing so you are forging bonds of unity.
t has stood here since 1852, and it is too small today. For despite the dangerous and oppressive situation endured by Christians in the region, the number of vocations is still rising. In all, there are 71 seminarians praying, living and studying together here in Beit Jala. And there are yet more applications still waiting on the desk of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. The dormitories and study rooms need to be renovated and enlarged – a task that will involve extensive building work. We have already promised financial help.
or as Pope Benedict XVI once said, ‘When we pray in the Eucharistic Presence, we are never alone. For then the entire Church prays and celebrates the Eucharist with us. Then we are praying in the place where prayers are heard, for we are praying in the place of death and resurrection, in other words the place where the real plea in all our pleading is heard – the plea for the overcoming of death, the plea for the love that is stronger than death. This is the kind of prayer we must seek anew.’ •
At least it’s not raining today... outside the crowded chapel in Bariis Cabid-an.
And then the money ran out – the half built church in Kopoye.
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Can Christianity survive the Persecution Cardinal Mauro Piacenza11
he question ‘Can Christianity survive the Persecution?’ is an extremely challenging and prophetic one. For we know well how in not a few regions of the world there is a veritable and outright persecution of Christians in spite of the massive and deafening silence of the world’s major media. A simple and comprehensive answer to this question is difficult for if by ‘Christianity’ we mean a Christian social and cultural context within which our human laws and common social life are framed then our answer might well be in the negative. Indeed it does appear as though Christianity, seen as the public expression of the Christian faith, will scarcely be able to survive today’s persecution which is striving to extirpate the ‘Christian presence’ from the Public Square through a strategy conducted from the shadows which aims at changing the mentality of men, of peoples and of their legislators. n the other hand the ‘Christian reality’ in itself, seen as the encounter with the Event and the Person of Jesus Christ himself, cannot be eliminated by any persecution. Indeed it is mysteriously strengthened by such persecution. ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians’12 says Tertullian and from this perspective Christianity has journeyed 26
for 2,000 years through history in constant dialogue with every ruling power and always striving to preserve the non-negotiable value of and inalienable right to religious freedom. n this sense we could say that Christianity has an inherently martyrological structure whose roots go down deeply into the historic event of the Crucifixion and the death of Jesus. Here we might say, paraphrasing the opening words of Deus Caritas Est13 that at the beginning of the Christian life is the encounter with Christ, who is always and at the same time the Crucified and the Risen Lord. The restorative dimension of the ChristEvent is the hermeneutical key to the martyrological structure of Christianity. It is in this context I would like to bring to attention two further considerations, the first of which concerns the roots of religious freedom. 11 Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, opening address to ACN conference on Christian Persecution, Malta, Monday 12th May, 2014. Adapted and translated from original Italian by J F Declan Quinn 12 Tertullian, Apologeticus, 50; CCC n. 852 13 Pope Benedict XVI, encyclical
I do not think anyone can reasonably deny that the cause of religious freedom is a mature fruit of Christianity. This ‘strange faith’ which made its entry into history in a polytheistic-authoritarian cultural context14 and walked for centuries along the ‘narrow way’ of persecution with that passion for man and for his freedom which is the hallmark of one which is aware of the implications of the Incarnation, of one which understands the supreme value of the fact that God has chosen to assume a fully human nature, definitively participating in history. he progressive penetration of our culture by Christianity and the fruitful and constructive dialogue between reason and faith15 have led over the course of time to the affirmation of religious freedom, which should be understood, not as a recognition of a ‘relativisation of truth’ with respect to the various cultural traditions of mankind, but should be seen as a prohibition on the part of any ruling power to tell people what they can and should believe. Religious freedom therefore does not legitimise the contemporary ‘supermarket’ approach to religious beliefs and spirituality but rather it places a limit on power and opposes any and all efforts, explicit or hidden, which attempt to unduly interfere with the exercise of a person’s freedom of conscience. •
14 Which even went as far as identifying the godhead with the ruling civil power. 15 Founded in the very definition of St John ‘The Word (Logos) was made flesh’)
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Be Missionaries of Joy - Benedict XVI
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oy is at the heart of Christian experience… • the joy of communion, • the joy of being Christian, • the joy of faith. …
In a world of sorrow and anxiety, joy is an important witness to the beauty and reliability of the Christian faith. The Church’s vocation is to bring joy to the world, a joy that is authentic and enduring, the joy proclaimed by the angels to the shepherds on the night Jesus was born (cf. Lk 2:10). Not only did God speak, not only did he accomplish great signs throughout the history of humankind, but he drew so near to us that he became one of us and lived our life completely. 16 Adapted from message of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for the Twenty-Seventh World Youth Day 2012 15 March 2012.
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In these difficult times, so many … people all around you need to hear that the Christian message is a message of joy and hope! …
1. Our hearts are made for joy yearning for joy lurks within the heart of every man and woman. Far more than immediate and fleeting feelings of satisfaction, our hearts seek a perfect, full and lasting joy capable of giving ‘flavour’ to our existence. This is particularly true for …(young people) … because youth is a time of continuous discovery of life, of the world, of others and of ourselves. It is a time • of openness to the future and • of great longing for happiness, friendship, sharing and truth,
• a time when we are moved by high ideals and make great plans.
All these things can bring us real joy.
Each day is filled with countless simple joys which are the Lord’s gift: • the joy of living, • the joy of seeing nature’s beauty, • the joy of a job well done, • the joy of helping others, • the joy of sincere and pure love.
et each day we also face any number of difficulties difficulties. Deep down we also worry about the future; we begin to wonder if the full and lasting joy for which we long might be an illusion and an escape from reality. Many young people ask themselves: is perfect joy really possible?
If we look carefully, we can see many other reasons to rejoice. There are the happy times in • family life, • shared friendship, • the discovery of our talents, • our successes, • the compliments we receive from others, • the ability to express ourselves and to know that we are understood, and • the feeling of being of help to others. There is also the excitement of • learning new things, • seeing new and broader horizons open up through our travels and encounters, and • realising the possibilities we have for charting our future. We might also mention the experience • of reading a great work of literature, • of admiring a masterpiece of art, • of listening to or playing music, or • of watching a film.
The quest for joy can follow various paths, and some of these turn out to be mistaken, if not dangerous. • How can we distinguish things that give real and lasting joy from immediate and illusory pleasures? • How can we find true joy in life, a joy that endures and does not forsake us at moments of difficulty?
2. God is the source of true joy hatever brings us true joy, whether the small joys of each day or the greatest joys in life, has its source in God, even if this does not seem immediately obvious. This is because God is a communion of eternal love, he is infinite joy that does not remain closed in on itself, but expands to embrace all whom God loves and who love him. God created us in his image out of love, in order to shower his love upon us and to fill us with his presence and grace.
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od wants us to share in his own divine and eternal joy, and he helps us to see that the deepest meaning and value of our lives lie in being accepted, welcomed and loved by him. Whereas we sometimes find it hard to accept others, God offers us an unconditional acceptance which enables us to say: ‘I am loved; I have a place in the world and in history; I am personally loved by God. If God accepts me and loves me and I am sure of this, then I know clearly and with certainty that it is a good thing that I am alive’. God’s infinite love for each of us is fully seen in Jesus Christ. The joy we are searching for is to be found in him. We see in the Gospel how the events at the beginning of Jesus’ life are marked by joy. • When the Archangel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that she is to be the mother of the Saviour, his first word is ‘Rejoice!’ (Lk 1:28). • When Jesus is born, the angel of the Lord says to the shepherds: ‘Behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a Saviour has been born for you, who is Messiah and Lord’ (Lk 2:10-11). • When the Magi came in search of the child, ‘they were overjoyed at seeing the star’ (Mt 2:10).
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The cause of all this joy is the closeness of God who became one of us. This is what Saint Paul means when he writes to the Philippians: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near’ (Phil 4:4-5). Our first reason for joy is the closeness of the Lord, who welcomes me and loves me. n encounter with Jesus always gives rise to immense inner joy. We can see this in many of the Gospel stories. We recall when Jesus visited , a dishonest tax collector and public sinner, he said to him: ‘Today I must stay at your house’. Then, Saint Luke tells us, Zacchaeus ‘received him with joy’ (Lk 19:5-6).
This is the joy of meeting the Lord. It is the joy of feeling God’s love, a love that can transform our whole life and bring salvation. Zacchaeus decides to change his life and to give half of his possessions to the poor. At the hour of Jesus’ passion, this love can be seen in all its power. At the end of his earthly life, while at supper with his friends, Jesus said: ‘As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love... I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete’ (Jn 15:9,11). Jesus wants to lead his disciples and each one of us into the fullness of joy that he shares with the Father, so that the Father’s love for him might abide in us (cf. Jn 17:26). Christian joy consists in being open to God’s love and belonging to him. he Gospels recount that Mary Magdalene and other women went to visit the tomb where Jesus had been laid after his death. An angel told them the astonishing news of Jesus’ resurrection. Then, the Evangelist tells us, they ran from the sepulchre, ‘fearful yet overjoyed’ to share the good news with the disciples. Jesus met them on the way and said: ‘Peace!’ (Mt 28:89). They were being offered the joy of salvation. Christ is the One who lives and who overcame evil, sin and death. He is present among us as the Risen One and he will remain with us until the end of the world (cf. Mt 28:20).
Evil does not have the last word in our lives; rather, faith in Christ the Saviour tells us that God’s love is victorious. This deep joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit who makes us God’s sons and daughters, capable of experiencing and savouring his goodness, and calling him ‘Abba’, Father (cf. Rm 8:15). Joy is the sign of God’s presence and action within us.
3. Preserving Christian joy in our hearts t this point we wonder: ‘How do we receive and maintain this gift of deep, spiritual joy?’ One of the Psalms tells us: ‘Find your delight in the Lord who will give you your heart’s desire’ (Ps 37:4). Jesus told us that ‘the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field’ (Mt 13:44). The discovery and preservation of spiritual joy is the fruit of an encounter with the Lord. Jesus asks us to follow him and to stake our whole life on him. Dear … people, do not be afraid to risk your lives by making space for Jesus Christ and his Gospel. This is the way to find inner peace and true happiness. It is the way to live fully as children of God, created in his image and likeness.
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Seek joy in the Lord: for joy is the fruit of faith. • It is being aware of his presence and friendship every day: ‘the Lord is near!’ (Phil 4:5). • It is putting our trust in God, and growing in his knowledge and love. … Dear friends, • learn to see how God is working in your lives and discover him hidden within the events of daily life. • Believe that he is always faithful to the covenant which he made with you on the day of your Baptism. • Know that God will never abandon you. • Turn your eyes to him often. He gave his life for you on the cross because he loves you. Contemplation of this great love brings a hope and joy to our hearts that nothing can destroy. Christians can never be sad, for they have met Christ, who gave his life for them. o seek the Lord and find him in our lives also means accepting his word, which is joy for our hearts. The Prophet Jeremiah wrote: ‘When I found your words, I devoured them; they became my joy and the happiness of my heart’ (Jer 15:16). Learn to read and meditate on the sacred Scriptures. There you will find an answer to your deepest questions about truth. God’s word reveals the wonders that he has accomplished throughout human history, it fills us with joy, and it leads us to 32
praise and adoration: ‘Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord; let us kneel before the Lord who made us’ (Ps 95:1,6). The liturgy is a special place where the Church expresses the joy which she receives from the Lord and transmits it to the world. ach Sunday at Mass the Christian community celebrates the central mystery of salvation, which is the death and resurrection of Christ. This is a very important moment for all the Lord’s disciples because his sacrifice of love is made present. Sunday is the day when we • meet the risen Christ, • listen to his word, and • are nourished by his body and blood. As we hear in one of the Psalms: ‘This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it and be glad’ (Ps 118:24). At the Easter Vigil, the Church sings the Exultet, a hymn of joy for the victory of Jesus Christ over sin and death: ‘Sing, choirs of angels! ... Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendour ... Let this place resound with joy, echoing the mighty song of all God’s people!’ Christian joy is born of this awareness of being loved by God who became man, gave his life for us and overcame evil and death. It means living a life of love for him. As Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, a young Carmelite, wrote: ‘Jesus, my joy is loving you’ (P 45, 21 January 1897).
4. The joy of love ear friends, joy is intimately linked to love. They are inseparable gifts of the Holy Spirit (cf. Gal 5:23). Love gives rise to joy, and joy is a form of love. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta drew on Jesus’ words: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 20:35) when she said: ‘Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls; God loves a cheerful giver. Whoever gives with joy gives more’. As the Servant of God Paul VI wrote: ‘In God himself, all is joy because all is giving’ (Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete in Domino, 9 May 1975). In every area of your life, you should know that to love means to be steadfast, reliable and faithful to commitments. This applies most of all to friendship. Our friends expect us to be sincere, loyal and faithful because true love perseveres even in times of difficulty. The same thing can be said about your work and studies and the services you carry out. Fidelity and perseverance in doing good brings joy, even if not always immediately.
St. Thérèse
If we are to experience the joy of love, we must also be generous. We cannot be content to give the minimum. We need to be fully committed in life and to pay particular attention to those in need. Aid to the Church in Need
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The world needs men and women who are competent and generous, willing to be at the service of the common good. • Make every effort to study conscientiously, to develop your talents and to put them at the service of others even now. • Find ways to help make society more just and humane wherever you happen to be. • May your entire life be guided by a spirit of service and not by the pursuit of power, material success and money. peaking of generosity, I would like to mention one particular joy. It is the joy we feel when we respond to the vocation to give our whole life to the Lord. Dear … people, do not be afraid if Christ is calling you to the religious, monastic or missionary life or to the priesthood. Be assured that he fills with joy all those who respond to his invitation to leave everything to be with him and to devote themselves with undivided heart to the service of others. In the same way, God gives great joy to men and women who give themselves totally to one another in marriage in order to build a family and to be signs of Christ’s love for the Church. Let me remind you of a third element that will lead you to the joy of love. It is allowing fraternal love to grow in your lives and in those of your communities. There is a close bond between communion and joy. It is not by chance that Saint Paul’s exhortation: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’ (Phil 4:4) is written in the plural, addressing 34
the community as a whole, rather than its individual members. Only when we are together in the communion of fellowship do we experience this joy. In the Acts of the Apostles, the first Christian community is described in these words: ‘Breaking bread in their homes, they ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart’ (Acts 2:46). I ask you to make every effort to help our Christian communities to be special places of sharing, attention and concern for one another.
5. The joy of conversion ear friends, experiencing real joy also means recognising the temptations that lead us away from it. Our present-day culture often pressures us to seek immediate goals, achievements and pleasures. It fosters fickleness more than perseverance, hard work and fidelity to commitments. The messages it sends push a consumerist mentality and promise false happiness. Experience teaches us that possessions do not ensure happiness. How many people are surrounded by material possessions yet their lives are filled with despair, sadness and emptiness! To have lasting joy we need to live in love and truth. We need to live in God. God wants us to be happy. That is why he gave us specific directions for the journey
of life: the commandments. If we observe them, we will find the path to life and happiness. At first glance, they might seem to be a list of prohibitions and an obstacle to our freedom. But if we study them more closely, we see in the light of Christ’s message that the commandments are a set of essential and valuable rules leading to a happy life in accordance with God’s plan. How often, on the other hand, do we see that choosing to build our lives apart from God and his will brings disappointment, sadness and a sense of failure. The experience of sin, which is the refusal to follow God and an affront to his friendship, brings gloom into our hearts. t times the path of the Christian life is not easy, and being faithful to the Lord’s love presents obstacles; occasionally we fall. Yet God in his
mercy never abandons us; he always offers us the possi-bility of • returning to him, • being reconciled with him and and • experiencing the joy of his love which forgives and welcomes us back. Dear … people, have frequent recourse to the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation! It is the sacrament of joy rediscovered. Ask the Holy Spirit for the light needed to acknowledge your sinfulness and to ask for God’s forgiveness. Celebrate this sacrament regularly, with serenity and trust. The Lord will always open his arms to you. He will purify you and bring you into his joy: for there is joy in heaven even for one sinner who repents (cf. Lk 15:7).
6. Joy at times of trial n the end, though, we might still wonder in our hearts whether it is really possible to live joyfully amid all life’s trials, especially those which are most tragic and mysterious. We wonder whether following the Lord and putting our trust in him will always bring happiness.
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
We can find an answer in some of the experiences of … people … who have found in Christ the light that can give strength and hope even in difficult situations. Aid to the Church in Need
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lessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (19011925) experienced many trials during his short life, including a romantic experience that left him deeply hurt. In the midst of this situation he wrote to his sister: ‘You ask me if I am happy. How could I not be? As long as faith gives me strength, I am happy. A Catholic could not be other than happy... The goal for which we were created involves a path which has its thorns, but it is not a sad path. It is joy, even when it involves pain’ (Letter to his sister Luciana, Turin, 14 February 1925). When Blessed John Paul II presented Blessed Pier Giorgio as a model for young people, he described him as ‘a young person with infectious joy, the joy that overcame many difficulties in his life’ (Address to Young People, Turin, 13 April 1980).
Chiara Badano
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loser to us in time is Chiara Badano (1971-1990), who was recently beatified. She experienced how pain could be transfigured by love and mysteriously steeped in joy. At the age of eighteen, while suffering greatly from cancer, Chiara prayed to the Holy Spirit and interceded for the young people of the movement to which she belonged. As well as praying for her own cure, she asked God to enlighten all those young people by his Spirit and to give them wisdom and light. ‘It was really a moment of God’s presence. I was suffering physically, but my soul was singing’ (Letter to Chiara Lubich, Sassello, 20 December 1989). The key to her peace and joy was her complete trust in the Lord and the acceptance of her illness as a mysterious expression of his will for her sake and that of everyone. She often said: ‘Jesus, if you desire it, then I desire it too’. These are just two testimonies taken from any number of others which show that
authentic Christians are never despairing or sad, not even when faced with difficult trials. They show that Christian joy is not a flight from reality, but a supernatural power that helps us to deal with the challenges of daily life. We know that the crucified and risen Christ is here with us and that he is a faithful friend always. When we share in his sufferings, we also share in his glory. With him and in him, suffering is transformed into love. And there we find joy (cf. Col 1:24).
7. Witnesses of joy ear friends, to conclude I would encourage you to be missionaries of joy. We cannot be happy if others are not. Joy has to be shared. Go and tell other young people about your joy at finding the precious treasure which is Jesus himself. We cannot keep the joy of faith to ourselves. If we are to keep it, we must give it away. Saint John said: ‘What we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; we are writing this so that our joy may be complete’ (1 Jn 1:3-4). Christianity is sometimes depicted as a way of life that stifles our freedom and goes against our desires for happiness and joy. But this is far from the truth. Christians are men and women who are truly happy because they know that they are not alone. They know that God is always holding them in his hands.
It is up to …. followers of Christ, to show the world that faith brings happiness and a joy which is true, full and enduring. If the way Christians live at times appears dull and boring, you should be the first to show the joyful and happy side of faith. The Gospel is the ‘good news’ that God loves us and that each of us is important to him. Show the world that this is true! Be enthusiastic witnesses of the new evangelisation! Go to those who are suffering and those who are searching, and give them the joy that Jesus wants to bestow. Bring it to your families, your schools and universities, and your workplaces and your friends, wherever you live. You will see how it is contagious. You will receive a hundredfold: the joy of salvation for yourselves, and the joy of seeing God’s mercy at work in the hearts of others. And when you go to meet the Lord on that last day, you will hear him say: ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant... Come, share your master’s joy’ (Mt 25:21). May the Blessed Virgin Mary accompany you on this journey. She welcomed the Lord within herself and proclaimed this in a song of praise and joy, the Magnificat: ‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’ (Lk 1:46-47). Mary responded fully to God’s love by devoting her life to him in humble and complete service. She is invoked as ‘Cause of our Joy’ because she gave us Jesus. May she lead you to that joy which no one will ever be able to take away from you! •
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Going the extra mile… and then some - J F Declan Quinn he truth is that sometimes difficult tasks are easily dispatched while apparently simple tasks soak up real time and effort.
another benefactor with whom I discussed the issue was sufficiently ‘moved’ to donate a significant cash amount to accompany the gift of the image.
Around the middle of 2013, a kind and generous ACN benefactor contacted us enquiring whether we would be interested in and able to deliver a treasured image she had of two Palestinian ladies praying at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to the Monastery Church at the ‘top of the world’ in Sikkim, India.
he ‘breakthrough’ came when my Frankfurt-based colleague Veronique Voegel, who looks after that part of the world for Aid to the Church in Need kindly arranged to factor a field trip to Darjeeling and Sikkim into her 2014 travel plans.
Since I did not think this would be too difficult to arrange and since I greatly valued this Irish lady’s display of solidarity, Iredily agreed to her benefactors requests. Little did I know that for six frustrating months the neatly rolled-up image would remain by my desk taunting me, as one after another of my efforts to have the image hand-delivered came to naught. To make matters worse our kindly benefactor was less than impressed by all the time it was taking. However to make matters better
Veronique Voegel (far left)and Bishop Steven (far right) 38
Now those of you who enjoy watching travel programs or have visited that part of the world in person know that it is far from easy to move around that part of the world. Veronique however inspired by the spirited generosity and witness of our two Irish benefactors went the extra mile (and then some) to personally bring gifts and prayers from our spiritually-struggling Church here in Ireland to the materially-struggling Church in Sikkim in communion with the heavily-persecuted Church in the Middle East. Bishop Stephen of Dajeeling was impressed and encouraged by Veronique’s and our benefactors’ quiet and concrete witness to the reality that the suffering and persecuted Church is one body with Christ as its head. et ‘The Love of Christ urges us forward’ (2Cor. 5:14). Especially in little things, let us go the extra mile… and then some! •
Become a
‘The Church’s vocation is to bring joy to the world’17
ecome a Missionary of Joy. Whether you be young or old, rich or poor, able or not there is nothing to prevent you. You can do so. Simply pledge to say • One ‘Our Father’ • One ‘Hail Mary’ & • One ‘Glory be’ every morning between now and Easter Sunday 2015 (April 5) and offer your prayer up for all the poor souls around the world who are suffering and dying for their Christian faith.
n order to be enrolled in our list of 2014-2015 Missionaries of joy please fill-in the accompanying form and return it to us in the provided pre-paid envelope. In doing so you may also wish to have names of your friends and / or family members included in a Novena of Holy Masses which is to be offered by Fr. Michael Shields and concluded on All Souls Day (November 2) 2014. pace on the accompanying form has been provided for you to include your prayer intention.
Pope Benedict XVI 17 Pope Benedict XVI: Message for the Twenty-Seventh World Youth Day 2012.
Aid to the Church in Need
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God’s first love Dear Friends, he poor are ‘God’s first love’. Or so they are called by Benedict XVI in his book on Jesus, where he describes them as the ‘simple souls, whom Jesus praised because it is to them above all that access to God’s Mystery is granted’. After Mary and Joseph, it was to the shepherds, as representatives of the poor, so to speak, that the Good News was first communicated. They went to the Child and gave what they had. The simple souls are the ones who lead the world to God. ‘The entire history of our redemption is marked by the presence of the poor’, writes Pope Francis (Evangelii Gaudium, 197), adding that ‘God’s heart has a special place for the poor, so much so that he himself “became
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poor” (2 Cor 8:9)’. And the Holy Father continues: ‘He made himself one of them: (“I was hungry and you gave me food to eat”)… and he taught them that mercy towards all of these is the key to heaven (cf. Mt 25:35ff.)’. id to the Church in Need is a work of living mercy. Day by day, thanks to you, it brings the poor an answer to their cry to heaven: Miserere nobis. Thanks to you, the persecuted of China and Central Africa, the downtrodden of the Middle East, the Churches of the martyrs in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria, the tormented and derided ones of this world can experience solidarity, love and help. Once again you have given more than we had any right to expect. Sometimes it is only a gesture, like Veronica’s cloth, because we can not eliminate the suffer-
ing of the world. But your gesture gives them the strength to go on. Without you, without your daily prayers and gifts, the plight of the Church in thousands of places in this world would be utterly hopeless, and the ‘catastrophe of hatred’ that Father Werenfried spoke of would overwhelm the world. You have sent us almost €90.0 million in widows mites and substantial checks, all of it was put a big basket of love, that you have entrusted us to distribute to those in need. ‘For the Church, the option for the poor is primarily a theological category rather than a cultural, sociological, political or philosophical one’ (Evangelii Gaudium, 198). In the fulfilment of our mission for the Church we were able to donate €73.4 million for concrete aid projects and pastoral support. In addition to this practical help, Father Werenfried was also profoundly aware of the importance of spiritual outreach to our benefactors.
od shows the poor ‘his first mercy’, writes Pope Francis. In all of ACN’s projects we can always recognise the working of God’s mercy for the world: that is why each project, with all its challenges, is also a lesson in love. And all of us, benefactors and project workers alike, can say that, as labourers in this vineyard, we are helping so that the world may turn in trust to God and find peace in his Mercy. And every euro serves to help keep open and point the world towards this doorway to God’s mystery, the mystery of love. Our heartfelt thanks to you all,
Johannes Freiherr Heereman, Executive President of ACN International
In his letter to the benefactors he always insisted on this point: ‘Our newsletter, the Mirror, is not only a matter of appealing for funds, but it is above all about the pastoral ministry to our benefactors’, he wrote. In encouraging you, dear friends, in your faith and in informing you via TV, radio, Internet and the printed word, about the situation in the worldwide Church, we are helping to build bridges between you and the suffering Church. Aid to the Church in Need
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2013 Report Income
€
%
Individual donations Mass Offerings Legacies Sales and tax relief Other donations/income
56,756,838 9,163,141 18,644,621 3,313,447 518,466
63.6 % 10.3 % 20.9 % 3.7 % 0.6 %
Expenses in fulfilment of the Church’s mission - Projects in 147 countries 57,648,717 - Project follow-up 2,429,684 - Information, media and pastoral support 13,281,433
Subtotal
88,396,513
99.1 %
Total mission related expenses
854,370
0.9 %
89,250,883
100 %
Net financial income Total income
Expenses
Media Apostolate 2.1% Bible Apostolate 5%
Theolgical Formation 12.5% Mass Offerings 17.6%
Catechesis 10.3%
Subsistence Aid 4.5% Emergency Aid 3.7%
Transport 6.9%
Construction 37.4%
64.6 % 2.7 % 14.9 % 82.2 %
Fundraising Administration
9,731,190 6,958,456
10.9 % 7.8 %
Total expenses
90,049,480
100.9 %
-798,597
-0.9 %
Income from donations in 2013 Country Currency Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Canada Chile France Germany Father Werenfried Foundation Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Poland Portugal Spain Switzerland UK USA International Secretariat
2013 2012 € 2,561,914 2,827,327 € 2,474,666 2,858,755 € 3,647,832 4,359,331 € 3,553,370 3,659,537 € 1,325,536 1,538,827 € 1,202,889 1,114,341 € 22,131,037 21,331,863 € 9,030,801 9,412,895 € 188,450 236,059 € 2,560,362 2,646,485 € 2,424,923 2,317,622 € 84,848 83,542 € 4,719,832 7,278,237 € 1,372,995 1,317,598 € 1,885,313 2,228,888 € 7,938,195 7,007,459 € 9,400,957 9,470,116 € 8,939,741 8,473,810 € 2,350,905 2,058,426 € 601,946 568,470
Total worldwide income in € 88,396,513
For further information visit www.acnireland.org 42
%
73,359,834
Taken from reserves
How your gifts were used in 147 Countries
€
90,789,588
Where you helped Albania 164,150 Algeria 28,100 Angola 274,898 Arabian Peninsula 46,900 Argentina 729,085 Armenia 62,488 Azerbaijan 4,800 Bahrain 259,570 Bangladesh 525,440 Belarus 504,720 Benin 198,931 Bolivia 419,757 Bosnia-Herzegovina 1,314,300 Botswana 5,600 Brazil 3,077,027 Bulgaria 174,350 Burkina Faso 433,351 Burundi 128,475 Cambodia 9,080 Cameroon 946,543 Cape Verde 30,000 Central African Republic 494,008 Chad 143,988 Chile 697,360 China 587,981 Colombia 639,366 Congo 138,500 Costa Rica 5,610 Croatia 310,757 Cuba 801,585 Czech Republic 402,000 Dominican Republic 2,033 DR Congo 2,591,628 East Timor 25,222 Ecuador 240,645 Egypt 623,469 El Salvador 50,795 Eritrea 166,548 Estonia 227,320 Ethiopia 1,143,138 Fiji 16,000 French Guiana 22,000 Georgia 199,663 Ghana 383,263 Greece 76,000 Guatemala 139,852 Guinea 481,351 Guinea-Bissau 77,750 Haiti 578,855 Honduras 45,208
Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Israel Ivory Coast Jamaica Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Lithuania Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Myanmar (Burma) Namibia Nepal Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Qatar Romania Russia (Catholic)
75,175 30,081 4,261,204 307,533 255,339 206,929 306,800 397,960 34,888 145,565 544,356 860,917 22,400 105,406 95,900 5,000 26,380 67,750 610,177 16,620 77,662 242,590 217,500 1,176,767 537,507 253,000 13,300 282,653 68,400 44,262 206,500 83,200 472,226 546,345 13,260 42,000 314,206 38,700 1,004,137 509,121 186,635 3,388 544,630 260,780 725,003 614,615 470,242 60,900 825,684 1,047,613
Aid to the Church in Need
Russia (Ecumenical) Russia (Orthodox) Rwanda São Tomé Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Sri Lanka Sudan Swaziland Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand The Gambia Togo Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam Western Sahara Zambia Zimbabwe
323,575 487,982 590,458 50,000 114,800 275,500 91,371 725,470 27,066 48,550 101,500 15,400 1,309,040 432,633 296,304 18,500 1,577,956 3,200 11,400 1,497,660 81,070 20,000 116,111 41,481 11,800 152,857 11,830 956,079 4,187,838 67,900 150,244 427,564 1,250,112 8,000 607,492 326,040
Regional Projects Western World
€ 1,325,268
Project follow-up
€ 2,429,684
Information, media and pastoral support
€ 13,281,433
Total
€ 73,359,834
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Dear Friends, A few weeks ago I was able to celebrate my 70th birthday. We spent three days together with our children and our wider family, and I realised once again that my family is by a long way the most important thing in my life. That is how most people see it, I imagine – even though today a hostile, anti-family policy deprives many people of the fulfilling experience of family life. But one thing is certain: it is the Church that from the very beginning has defended marriage and the family as the God-given sanctuary of love and life. This seems to me to be more important than ever today.
For our very human nature is being called into question. We live today, as one wise Cardinal once observed, ‘no longer in an age of world views, but in an age of human opinions’. Many priests, religious and laity live the family as a spiritual reality. As spiritual fathers and mothers they help people to feel close to God in the midst of their distress. Whether in the confessional or in the care of the elderly, in the youth apostolate or the support of families, in marriage preparation courses or the defence of human life – in every situation – it is the grace of the love of God working through them. And in many of these situations you are helping too. For this I thank you with all my heart. Yours, in gratitude – and in hope,
Johannes Freiherr Heereman, Executive President of ACN International
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AMDG Dear Friends, Last year all of you, through your Prayers, Mass Offerings, Legacies and Donations to Aid to the Church in Need, were Witnesses to Hope and Missionaries of Joy to all of Christ’s suffering and persecuted children throughout the world. Aid to the Church in Need’s mission is to help strengthen the Universal Church in all its efforts to more effectively proclaim the Joy of the Gospel and make available its sacramental Graces especially to those people who and in those places which are most need of God’s mercy. The simple truth is the more effective we are in this work of the Holy Spirit, the more effective we will be in promoting real peace and lasting joy within our world, within our communities, within our families and in our lives. In all of this we unambiguously believe in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Catholic Church. Moreover we are in no doubt that without the Light of Faith and the Joy of the Gospel, humanity will destroy itself. Consequently we readily agree with Pope Benedict XVI that teaching others what it means to be human, teaching them ‘The Art of Living’ is the heart of Evangelisation and the mission of the Church. So it is that as that through your Prayers, Mass Offerings, Legacies and Donations to Aid to the Church in Need you are an authentic ‘Missionary of Joy’, you
bring lasting joy and real hope to people who, and places which, know only strife and despair. For proof of this truth you need simply talk to any of the thousands of bishops, priests, religious brothers /sisters, lay catechists and lay apostolic workers around the world who through ACN have received your help in the last year and in the last years. So... Thank you for your prayerful support over recent and past years. Thank you for being an integral part of ACN’s global Network of Hope. Thank you for simultaneously being both a known and an anonymous Missionary of Joy. So too let us pray for the grace that we may continue to lovingly undertake, for our less fortunate brothers and sisters, all those little acts of love which none but God sees and about which we do not speak: the Lord knows our hearts, He knows what we have done and He will reward us beyond measure. Let the love of Christ, always and everywhere, continue to urge us forward, Your brother in Christ,
J F Declan Quinn Director, Aid to the Church in Need (Ireland)
Where to send your contribution for the Church in Need: Please use the Freepost envelope. Aid to the Church in Need, 151 St. Mobhi Road, Glasnevin, Dublin 9. TEL (01) 837 7516. EMAIL info@acnireland.org WEB www.acnireland.org Registered Charity Numbers: (RoI) 9492 (NI) XR96620. If you give by standing order, or have sent a donation recently, please accept our sincere thanks. This Mirror is for your interest and information.
Stand firm in the faith, be strong. (1 Cor. 16:13)
‘The one who shows mercy makes his life into a gift for all.’ ACN Spiritual Assistant
‘Christ demands a faith that will move mountains. And since he never demands the impossible, we can, in the strength of our faith, move aside mountains of misery and ignorance, of misunderstanding, hatred and lovelessness. Usually this implies a task of reconciliation, that can be achieved only through prayer, humility and selfless love.’
Smiling again - in the Fazendas many young people find their way back to life.
Father Werenfried van Straaten (1913-2003)
Aid to the Church in Need helping the Church heal the world. 151 St. Mobhi Road, Dublin 9. TEL 01 837 7516 EmaiL info@acnireland.org
www.acnireland.org www.wheregodweeps.org www.godspeakstohischildren.org