Building fraternity to heal the world

A fraternity congress with over 4,000 brothers, including cardinals, bishops, priests and lay people, among several delegates from many countries, is presented in several languages. Like the Eucharist, it unites all the brothers around the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord, to heal the wounded world.

Our most painful wound is not to treat others as brothers and sisters; we live as slaves of the ego and forget to embrace our brothers and sisters. The consequences are terrible: war, as shared by the auxiliary bishop of Sambir, Ukraine, Msgr. Hryhoriy Komar, the suffering of migrants by Ms Leyden Revelo, who works for Caritas in the USA and other wounds that need to be healed. We need to live as brothers, and Eucharist unites us in a song of fraternity (Paul Martinez), to be a family to live and learn in this school of fraternity (Mgr Graziano Borgognova), and to let it transform our life and the whole world (Mgr Andrew Cozzens).

We already have the testimony of several people and families as a light in this darkness of pain: the cry of Montesino (Dominican Republic), Mons. Oscar Romero (Salvador), Mons. José Antonio (Vicariate of Esmeraldas, Ecuador) amid drug traffickers and gangs, the lay family of Mato Grosso who remain faithful to work in the mission, the lay people of Switzerland (Max and Maria Gabriela) who try to live synodality in the family or also Mary Wu from Taiwan in front of the devotion to the Blessed Sacrament to the children. But something continues to strike us in the face of wounded fraternity. It is the Eucharist as a source, the strength from such a sacred heart of God as Mgr Jose Ignacio Munillo says, ‘The Heart of Jesus is a school of Love. It is the human school of divine love, and it is the divine school of human love’.

Paco Wellikin, MSC