The importance of forgiveness

During his Angelus address last Sunday, Pope Francis spoke of the importance of forgiveness:

“How much suffering, how many wounds, how many wars could be avoided if forgiveness and mercy were the style of our life! Even in families. How many families are disunited, who do not know how to forgive each other. How many brothers and sisters bear resentment within. It is necessary to apply merciful love to all human relationships: between spouses, between parents and children, within our communities, in the Church and also in society and politics.

“The book of Sirach says: ‘remember your end and stop hating’. But think of the end. Just think, you will be in a coffin… and will you take your hatred there? Think that in the end you can stop hating and resenting. Remember your end and stop hating.”

Importance of personal participation

Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in a letter to bishops’ conferences said that “we must return to the Eucharist… with an increased desire to meet the Lord, to be with Him, to receive Him and to bring Him to our brothers and sisters with the witness of a life full of faith, love and hope” as “no broadcast is comparable to personal participation or can replace it”.

Nothing will be the same

Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, asked whether the restrictions on religious and liturgical services will be a “powerful drive to innovate, which will eventually lead to good things”? 

“Will the complaints and annoyance at the closed doors of the churches fill them up again, after the end of the pandemic?”, the bishop asks himself, and “what will happen to the new, interesting virtual formats, the streamed celebrations, in which so much creativity has been invested?”

For Bätzing, “nothing will ever be the same again”.