The world needs hope

On May 12 over 80 thousand people attended the opening ceremony of the second Kirchentag, the Ecumenical Day of the Churches in Germany on the Theresienwiese esplanade in Munich. The Bavarian city inaugurated the events with bell-tolls, musical bands and three open-air celebrations. An extraordinary event in numbers: the program is contained in 720 pages and envisages over 3000 events in 5 days (until May 16) which include round tables, ecumenical celebrations, forums and performances. 60 project-managing commissions – represented by Church institutions and associations – organized the event titled “That you may have hope”, with over 100,000 registered participants along with occasional visitors. Pope Benedict XVI – who is currently in Portugal for his apostolic visit – sent a lengthy message to participants.“The good wheat has not been stifled”. A call to hope, despite the current troubled period was made by Pope Benedict XVI in a message to the participants in the Ecumenical Day of the Churches. “At a difficult time – the Pope writes -, you want to give a sign of hope in the Church and in society. I thank you very much for that, because our world needs hope. But is the Church really a place of hope? Over the last few months, we have been uninterruptedly had to face news that want to take out the joy of the Church, that darken it as a place of hope”. The Pope calls to imitate not just the Saints, but also “the small people who are not quoted by the papers or by the history books, grown in great humanity and goodness through their faith”. “If we do not perceive only the dark side but also the bright, good side of our time, we will see that faith makes the human being pure, educating him to love”. “Discord exists even and precisely inside the Church and among those that the Lord called specially to serve Him. But God’s light has not disappeared. The good wheat has not been stifled by the seed of darnel”.“Not to loose sight of the good things”. “The phrase ‘So that you have hope’ – the Pope went on, quoting the slogan of the Ökt – wants to invite us first and foremost not to lose sight of the good things. It invites us to be good and always become good again, to fight on God’s side for the world as Adam did, and to strenuously try to live off God’s justice”. “So, is the Church a place of hope? It is, because God’s Word keeps coming to us from it, the world that purifies us and shows us the way to faith”. Benedict XVI highlights that “nothing can darken or destroy all this. And we must rejoice at this, even in our hardships”. The Pope recalls that, “if we speak of the Church as a place of hope that comes from God, this also involves a soul searching: how do I behave with the hope that God gave us? Do I really let myself be educated by His word? Do I let myself be changed and healed by Him? How much darnel grows in me? Am I ready to tear it out? Am I grateful for the gift of forgiveness and am I willing, in turn, to forgive and heal, instead of condemning?” “The great things in life, we cannot ‘make them’: we can only wish for them. The good news of faith is precisely this: there is someone who can give them to us. We are not left to ourselves. God lives, God loves us”. “This is our hope and our joy, despite the confusion of this period”.The invitation to not get discouraged. During the ecumenical service on the Theresienwiese esplanade, the evangelical bishop of Bavaria, Johannes Friedrich called upon Christians to not be discouraged by the many world problems. The Catholic archbishop of Munich Msgr. Reinhard Marx, invited those present to intervene in society. Marx addressed the ongoing debate on abuses in the Catholic Church. “Churches are conveyors of Christian hope. For this reason the fact that Church representatives have betrayed people’s hopes is even worse”, he said. “We pray for the victims of abuses and violence”, said Ökt Catholic President Alois Glück, during the prayer of the faithful. German Federal President Horst Köhler and the Prime Horst Seehofer also attended the event. Addressing the crisis in the Church, Köhler underlined the need for a conscience examination and conversion. “The encounter with Christians arrives at the right moment”, he remarked, since “it can provide the strength for renewal”. “Ecumenism lives. We must not let ourselves be intimidated”, is the encouragement of Msgr. Robert Zollitsch, President of the German Bishops’ Conference, conveyed in a an interview to Catholic news agency KNA. “The path of ecumenical coexistence is irreversible”, he said, “we must identify what can be done together in practice”.