P R A Y I N G W I T H T H E C H U R C H
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INTENTION : |
That through its compelling preaching of the Gospel, the Church may give young people new reasons for life and hope.
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Offering the good news of the Gospel to the new generation, in a credible and meaningful way, is a permanent and always fascinating challenge for the Church. There is no doubt that we live in a time of confusion and deep crisis, also inside the Church. Intolerance and uncertainty, injustice, wars, violence, poverty and hunger are increasing in the world. The dominant western culture is characterised by secularism and materialism, which appears not to need God. But at the same time, perhaps for that very reason, we are protagonists of a time of intense spiritual search on the part of many of our contemporaries. There is a rebirth of spirituality and of desire for God. The progress of science and the abundance of material things have not been able to answer the question about the meaning of life and the most burning needs of the human heart. Today many religious proposals come onto the market to offer responses to the existential emptiness of those who do not want a world without God. So we are at a moment in history which creates an opportunity, a favourable occasion, for the Church and for the Apostleship of Prayer. We want to make use of our rich spiritual tradition, the Fathers of the Church, the Desert Fathers, the mystics of all periods, to give an answer to our contemporaries. There is a need for God, and we have found the hidden treasure. We want and we ought to proclaim it, first from our own witness, telling others what we have discovered. I close by quoting Pope John Paul II, regarding this issue: "People today put more trust in witnesses than in teachers, in experience than in teaching, and in life and in action than in theories. The witness of a Christian life is the first and irreplaceable form of mission: Christ, whose mission we continue, is the 'witness' par excellence and the model of all Christian witness."
(Redemptoris Missio 42)
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