Office for Christian Unity
Thursday 18 April 2024
Meditation
God speaks to us
Reading the Gospel is like coming face to face with Christ. Almost unintelligible to the “curious”, it is discovered by souls of good will, meaning those who have the will to do good, which only needs to be known in order to be done.It would be a strange idea of the transcendence of the living God and of the Revelation of his Mystery to think that he can respond to man’s intellectual curiosity alone.
To those who approach it with both fists against their ears, deliberately deaf, the Gospel is a sealed book. The Word of God, according to Saint James, is a mirror; you don’t look in a mirror, but you look at yourself in a mirror ( James 1, 24). It is to us that God speaks, and it is of us that he speaks. He is only interested in this: our lives. If He tells us something about His life, it is in relation to ours. If we put our lives on the margins of our reading, God ceases to speak to us. […]
The Gospel doesn’t just state what it says; it proposes, and expects our freedom to respond. A proposal of love, to which the response can only be love. And there is no love except from Someone and towards Someone. That’s why, through the Gospel, we must reach the very person of Jesus Christ, and, beyond the words he speaks, penetrate to the Spirit who inspired them…
François Varillon, Traversées d’un croyant, Selected texts presented by Charles Ehlinger, Bayard, 2005, pp. 111-112.
Intercessions
To be adapted according to your location
Lord, we thank you for all those baptised in the Catholic Church of France at Easter. Thank you especially for the thirst of young people that amazes, encourages and strengthens the Church.
We entrust these young people to you, and in particular the judgements and tensions that may exist between their different Christian sensibilities, from the most traditionalist to the most charismatic. Holy Spirit, come and bring unity to diversity, and reveal the richness of communion.
Lord, we thank you for the friendship that is growing between the United Protestant Church of France and the Community through local meetings and activities.
Help us to go further in our relationship and in the sharing of our gifts, so that we may be witnesses to reconciliation and signs of your Kingdom.
This summer, the 18-30 Youth Ministry is organising several “Welcome To Paradise” festivals. The proliferation of this event has become a wonderful opportunity to invite pastors from different churches all over Europe, to meet them, to give them a voice and to create a fraternal network between the leaders of these churches.
We pray to you Lord for those pastors and those churches who enrich our mission. We also pray that the “Welcome To Paradise” Festival will continue to become more and more a place where young people can discover and appropriate the importance of Christian unity.