At his Wednesday General Audience last week (October 18), Pope Francis issued an appeal for prayer and fasting on behalf of peace in the Holy Land.
Please join the Holy Father in prayer on Friday, October 27, at Noon local time.
Some examples of how we can respond to the appeal of Pope Francis are as follows:
- Pray the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, or some other devotional prayer for peace.
- Pray and reflect upon the Peace Prayer attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi.
- Engage in fasting from food (e.g., skip one meal or have two small meals and a third that does not exceed the sum of the first two).
- Fast from some activity that you normally enjoy (e.g., watching television, surfing the internet, etc.) and instead spend that time in prayer, reading Scripture, etc.
- Seek to be reconciled with someone in your life with whom you need to make peace.
- Celebrate the Sacrament of Penance as a way of promoting peace in your own life.
- Consider giving some financial support to a humanitarian aid organization assisting those in war torn countries (e.g., Catholic Relief Services, etc.)
We can also pray Pope Francis’ prayer for peace:
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”. Instill 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.