Dear friends,
In the email of 15/09/2020 we reminded you of the concrete attitudes to incarnate in our lives the Pope’s prayer intentions of 2021 and that the key to understanding them was the Human Fraternity for World Peace and Common Coexistence.
Compass of the year: fraternity and social friendship
At the meeting on the first Wednesday of the month, in December, we said that the entire Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network (together with our youth branch, the EYM), was invited to live The Way of the Heart under the sign of the Fratelli Tutti Encyclical. In June 2019 Pope Francis reminded us that the foundation of our mission is compassion for the world. In December he asked to us that this year we could go deeper into Fratelli Tutti.
The Way of the Heart is the compass of our mission, so this year we are invited to deepen it in the light of Fratelli Tutti, who shows us in a concrete way how to live our mission of compassion for the world. I invite you to deepen the Way of the Heart in connection with Fratelli Tutti, adapting it for the young people of the EYM.
Under the sign of St. Joseph and the Holy Family
The Pope also invites the whole Church throughout the world to put this year under the sign of St Joseph. If we are all brothers and sisters it is because we have one Father, Creator of heaven and earth, of the visible and invisible universe. In his Apostolic Letter, Pope Francis confided: “I want to imagine that, for the parable of the prodigal son and the merciful father, Jesus was inspired by the behaviour of Joseph” (cf. Lk 15:11-32) (PC4). “Jesus saw in Joseph the tenderness of God” (PC2) I invite you to read and meditate on the 6 points he proposes on what it means to have the heart of a father, which can help many fathers and families.
From March 2021 has also called for a special year dedicated to the family #AmorisLaetitia, which will be inaugurated on the next Solemnity of St. Joseph.
In Jesus-Christ, our hope,
Frederic Fornos SJ
“At this moment in history, marked by the ecological crisis and grave economic and social imbalances only worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, it is all the more important for us to acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters. God has made this fraternal unity possible, by giving us his Son Jesus. The fraternity he offers us has nothing to do with fine words, abstract ideals or vague sentiments. It is a fraternity grounded in genuine love, making it possible for me to encounter others different from myself, feeling com-passion for their sufferings, drawing near to them and caring for them even though they do not belong to my family, my ethnic group or my religion. For all their differences, they are still my brothers and sisters. The same thing is true of relationships between peoples and nations: brothers and sisters all!”
Pope Francis – Christmas 2020 #UrbiEtOrbi