Pavens fasterefleksjoner

Pope's Comment

At the end of the Spiritual Exercises, John Paul II addressed Archbishop Nguyên Van Thuân very familiarly, to thank him for the meditations. "These have been days of intense and prolonged listening to the Spirit who spoke to our hearts in the silence and the attentive meditation of the Word of God."

In commenting on the meditations of the Archbishop, who is president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Pontiff acknowledged that "he has guided us in deepening our vocation as witnesses of evangelical hope at the beginning of the third millennium. A witness of the Cross, during the long years of imprisonment he lived in Vietnam, he has often told us about events and incidents of his harsh captivity, thus reinforcing us in the consoling certainty that, when everything collapses around us, even in our interior, Christ continues indefatigably to be our support. We thank Archbishop Nguyên Van Thuân for his testimony, which is especially significant in this Jubilee year."

The Holy Father explained that the "crucified and risen Christ is our only real hope. Fortified by his help, his disciples became men and women of hope. But not of fleeting hopes, which would leave them tired and which disappoint the human heart, but of real hope, a gift of God that, supported from on high, tends to obtain the highest Good and is sure of reaching it. Today's world has urgent need of this hope. The Great Jubilee we are celebrating takes us step by step to go profoundly into the reasons for our Christian hope, which demands and fosters increasing trust in God and an ever more generous opening to brothers."