Posted on 06/08/2014 12:58:44 PM PDT by NYer
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis Pope Francis delivered remarks to the Presidents of Palestine and Israel, Mahmoud Abbas and Shimon Peres, along with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, and delegations representing Jews, ChristiansMuslims, all of whom were gathered in the Vatican Sunday evening to pray for peace in the Middle East and throughout the world. Below, please find the full text of the Holy Father's prepared remarks.
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Distinguished Presidents,
I greet you with immense joy and I wish to offer you, and the eminent delegations accompanying you, the same warm welcome which you gave to me during my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
I am profoundly grateful to you for accepting my invitation to come here and to join in imploring from God the gift of peace. It is my hope that this meeting will mark the beginning of a new journey where we seek the things that unite, so as to overcome the things that divide.
I also thank Your Holiness, my venerable Brother Bartholomaios, for joining me in welcoming these illustrious guests. Your presence here is a great gift, a much-appreciated sign of support, and a testimony to the pilgrimage which we Christians are making towards full unity.
Your presence, dear Presidents, is a great sign of brotherhood which you offer as children of Abraham. It is also a concrete expression of trust in God, the Lord of history, who today looks upon all of us as brothers and who desires to guide us in his ways.
This meeting of prayer for peace in the Holy Land, in the Middle East and in the entire world is accompanied by the prayers of countless people of different cultures, nations, languages and religions: they have prayed for this meeting and even now they are united with us in the same supplication. It is a meeting which responds to the fervent desire of all who long for peace and dream of a world in which men and women can live as brothers and sisters and no longer as adversaries and enemies.
Dear Presidents, our world is a legacy bequeathed to us from past generations, but it is also on loan to us from our children: our children who are weary, worn out by conflicts and yearning for the dawn of peace, our children who plead with us to tear down the walls of enmity and to set out on the path of dialogue and peace, so that love and friendship will prevail.
Many, all too many, of those children have been innocent victims of war and violence, saplings cut down at the height of their promise. It is our duty to ensure that their sacrifice is not in vain. The memory of these children instils in us the courage of peace, the strength to persevere undaunted in dialogue, the patience to weave, day by day, an ever more robust fabric of respectful and peaceful coexistence, for the glory of God and the good of all.
Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare. It calls for the courage to say yes to encounter and no to conflict: yes to dialogue and no to violence; yes to negotiations and no to hostilities; yes to respect for agreements and no to acts of provocation; yes to sincerity and no to duplicity. All of this takes courage, it takes strength and tenacity.
History teaches that our strength alone does not suffice. More than once we have been on the verge of peace, but the evil one, employing a variety of means, has succeeded in blocking it. That is why we are here, because we know and we believe that we need the help of God. We do not renounce our responsibilities, but we do call upon God in an act of supreme responsibility before our consciences and before our peoples. We have heard a summons, and we must respond. It is the summons to break the spiral of hatred and violence, and to break it by one word alone: the word “brother”. But to be able to utter this word we have to lift our eyes to heaven and acknowledge one another as children of one Father.
To him, the Father, in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, I now turn, begging the intercession of the Virgin Mary, a daughter of the Holy Land and our Mother.
Lord God of peace, hear our prayer!
We have tried so many times and over so many years to resolve our conflicts by our own powers and by the force of our arms. How many moments of hostility and darkness have we experienced; how much blood has been shed; how many lives have been shattered; how many hopes have been buried… But our efforts have been in vain.
Now, Lord, come to our aid! Grant us peace, teach us peace; guide our steps in the way of peace. Open our eyes and our hearts, and give us the courage to say: “Never again war!”; “With war everything is lost”. Instil in our hearts the courage to take concrete steps to achieve peace.
Lord, God of Abraham, God of the Prophets, God of Love, you created us and you call us to live as brothers and sisters. Give us the strength daily to be instruments of peace; enable us to see everyone who crosses our path as our brother or sister. Make us sensitive to the plea of our citizens who entreat us to turn our weapons of war into implements of peace, our trepidation into confident trust, and our quarreling into forgiveness.
Keep alive within us the flame of hope, so that with patience and perseverance we may opt for dialogue and reconciliation. In this way may peace triumph at last, and may the words “division”, “hatred” and “war” be banished from the heart of every man and woman. Lord, defuse the violence of our tongues and our hands. Renew our hearts and minds, so that the word which always brings us together will be “brother”, and our way of life will always be that of: Shalom, Peace, Salaam! Amen.
Beautiful prayer service, ping!
guess that part of catholics not praying to Mary is now discounted.
guess that part of catholics not praying to Mary is now discounted.
...guess that rumor about you understanding the distinction between requesting intercession and veneration can now be discounted as well...oh well...
As a former Catholic, I can understand asking for prayers...
...and indeed Mary is Mother of the church, and a step above even the Saints...
...but to ask for action?!? That strikes me as a step too far.
Only God, through the form of the Holy Sprit (these days) can effect action here in the space-time continuum....
He was “begging” Mary to take help him in his prayer.
That sounds like prayer.
“As a former Catholic, I can understand asking for prayers...
...and indeed Mary is Mother of the church, and a step above even the Saints...
...but to ask for action?!? That strikes me as a step too far.”
Catholics do not ask The Blessed Virgin, Mary, for action. We ask HER to PRAY for us.
What’s so hard to understand?
Let's break down this sentence to see if there is intercession or veneration. In either case, applied to Mary it is against the Bible. We should only pray and revere Christ and Christ alone. He died for our sins....not Mary, Peter, or Paul. When the disciples asked Christ to teach them to pray no mention of Mary was made. No where in the NT is there anyone ever praying to, or commanded to pray, to Mary.
The paragraph before the line in question:
History teaches that our strength alone does not suffice. More than once we have been on the verge of peace, but the evil one, employing a variety of means, has succeeded in blocking it. That is why we are here, because we know and we believe that we need the help of God. We do not renounce our responsibilities, but we do call upon God in an act of supreme responsibility before our consciences and before our peoples. We have heard a summons, and we must respond. It is the summons to break the spiral of hatred and violence, and to break it by one word alone: the word "brother". But to be able to utter this word we have to lift our eyes to heaven and acknowledge one another as children of one Father.
The line in question:
To him, the Father, in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, I now turn, begging the intercession of the Virgin Mary.
The paragraph after:
Lord God of peace, hear our prayer!
Let' see...in the first part of the sentence in question the pope is addressing the Father To Him....then in the second part, he shifts the address to Mary....I now turn, begging the intercession of the Virgin Mary...
Definition of venerate: regard highly, reverence, adore, honor, respect
Definition of intercession: prayer, petition or entreaty in favor of another
Definition of beg: to ask earnestly for
The pope just "asks" the father, yet he begs Mary....interesting. More emphasis is placed on his appeal to Mary than to the Father. One he asks....one he begs.
No, it is against what “you understand the Bible to mean”. More learned men than either of us who read the scriptures 1500 to 1,900 years ago had not problem with asking the saints to pray for baptized Christians here on earth. There is a consistent witness to this in the Liturgies of the early Church and Patristic Fathers.
And a quick reference for consistent practice of intercessory prayer. 2 cites are from Eastern Catholic Liturgical Rites [Saint Cyril of Jerusalem’ account of a Eucharistic Liturgy and Saint Basil the Great and the Liturgy of his name]
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-intercession-of-the-saints
What’s so hard to understand?
Hahahahahahaaaaa...
It's so hard to understand words which obviously have no clear meaning.
Action? Pray for us? Only in the mind of someone so obviously unable to comprehend the English language can prayer not be equated with ACTION!
She's dead! She is NOT an intercessor. That is the sole role and responsibility of Jesus Christ, through the ACTION of the Holy Spirit!
From Wiki: Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate ...
Matthew 6: 5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him....
God bless Pope Francis!
and that's in the Bible where? we have the same Scriptures today they did 1500 to 1900 years ago. they haven't changed.
The location is the altar in both verses. It's the same group of slain saints in both passages.
To infer that the prayers of the saints in 8:4, and the saints for that matter, are different from those in Rev 6 is practicing eisogesis....reading something into the text that isn't there.
Where is it not in the Bible? They read the same scriptures, you are correct, yet they affirm the practice, which is rooted in the doctrine of “Communion of saints”, which is part of the Apostles Creed.
In the book of Revelation, which has from Chapters 4 thru roughly 8, a view of heavenly Liturgical worship [it is there, incense, garments, white robes, a never ending repetitive Liturgical prayer of Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty] we see a passage “with golden bowls full of incense which are the prayers of the saints” [Rev 5:8] and later on we see this image again “And another angel came and stood at the altar [hmmm an altar in heaven?????, sounds like rock band modern protestant worship services now doesn’t it??????{sarcasm obviously}] with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of ALL(emphasis mine here) the Saints upon the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God the saints” [Rev 8:3-4]. Saint Paul could even state in his First Letter to Timothy that those who rule over the Church should “In the presence of God, Christ Jesus and the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules....” [1 Timothy 5:21] which suggest that the Angels in heaven are aware of the goings on here on earth. Saint Lukes Gospel also has a basic theological framework for the reality that those in heaven are aware of what is going on here on earth when we read “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than over ninety-nine righteous person who need no repentance....just as I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” [Luke 15:7-10].
In closing, I find “your personal view of scripture” theologically baseless and not supported the consistent doctrine of the Communion of Saints which is alluded to in Sacred Scripture and supported by Apostolic Tradition as expressed in all the major Liturgies of the early Church and consistent statements by the Church Fathers.
ealgeone:
No, to infer what you want to infer is pure protestant innovation and is not found in the early Church’s reading of the those same scriptures. You can appeal to your view and some modern fundamentalist protestant internet theologian. I can appeal to a consensus of both Latin and Greek sources and what is done in both the Catholic and Orthodox Church.
So those in heaven with Christ, are they Dead?
Have you read the text?
your appeal is to man-made sources and not the Bible alone. if you keep things in context you will see the saints in these passages are all the same. they are in Heaven at the altar and they are making prayers to God regarding when will He avenge their blood on those who dwell on the earth.
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