CHRIST’S DISCIPLES MUST GIVE AUTHENTIC WITNESS OF THEIR UNITY

Vatican City,  (VIS) - Yesterday evening the Holy Father met with Orthodox Patriarchs, representatives of Protestant communities and Catholic Patriarchs of Lebanon. The encounter took place at the Syrian Catholic Patriarchate in Charfet, Beirut, famous for its library which contains more than 3,000 manuscripts in Syriac and Arabic.

Having listened to some welcome remarks addressed to him by His Beatitude Ignace Youssif III Younan, Patriarch of Antioch of the Syrians, the Holy Father expressed his thanks to those present who, he said, "represent the diversity of the Church in the East. ... My thoughts also go to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt and to the Ethiopian Orthodox who have had the recent sadness of losing their respective Patriarchs. I wish to assure them of my fraternal closeness and of my prayers".

Benedict XVI continued: "Allow me to acknowledge here the testimony of faith shown by the Syrian Antiochene Church in the course of its glorious history, a testimony to an ardent love for Christ, which has caused it to write some heroic pages of this history, right up to the present, by remaining committed to the faith even to the point of martyrdom. I encourage this Church to be for the peoples of the region a sign of the peace that comes from God as well as a light that keeps their hope alive. I extend this encouragement to all the Churches and ecclesial communities present in the region".

"Our encounter this evening", he went on, "is an eloquent sign of our profound desire to respond to the call of Christ, 'that all may be one'. In these unstable times, so inclined to the violence which your region knows so well, it is even more necessary that Christ’s disciples give an authentic witness to their unity, so that the world may believe in their message of love, peace and reconciliation. This is a message that all Christians, and we in particular, have been commissioned to hand on to the world, a message of inestimable value in the present context of the Middle East.

"Let us work without ceasing so that the love of Christ may lead us little by little into full communion with each other", the Pope added. "In this regard, by means of common prayer and mutual commitment, we must constantly return to our one Lord and Saviour. For, as I wrote in the Apostolic Exhortation 'Ecclesia in Medio Oriente' which I have the pleasure of consigning to you, 'Jesus draws into unity those who believe in and love Him; He gives them the Spirit of His Father as well as Mary, His mother'".

The Holy Father concluded his remarks by entrusting the members of the various Churches and communities to the Blessed Virgin. "May she intercede with her Son for us, so that we may be delivered from every evil and from all forms of violence, and so that the Middle East may at last know a time of reconciliation and peace. May the words of Jesus that I have so often cited during this journey - My peace I give to you - be for all of us the common sign that we will give in the name of Christ to the peoples of this beloved region, which longs to see those words fulfilled!"