TO ALL THE TERESIAN CARMEL:
DISCALCED CARMELITES, SECULAR CARMELITES, CARMELITE FAMILY….
“Give us Peace in Ukraine, Lord”.
Tomorrow, February 24, marks one year since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. A year of absurdity, horror, insanity and the arbitrariness of war.
It does not take many words to embellish with more rage and more astonishment, more indignation and more tears of impotence, the incomprehensible and perverse dynamics of the war. That of Ukraine and of all wars. At the beginning, just after the war broke out, I invited the whole Order to PRAY UNITED, WITH ALL OUR HEARTS and with all our strength.
Today I write these lines to you from Iraq, from the land of Genesis, from that creation of God, where he saw that ALL WAS GOOD… From the land of Abraham, our ‘Father in faith’, who believed against all hope that God’s promise would be fulfilled….
Today, I beseech the whole Order, the whole Carmel, to pray ‘for invincible hope’, to believe that peace is coming and that our supplication will accompany our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. May the horror of war not anesthetize our ardent prayer, and let us pray feeling that the bombs are falling on our own families, our children, brothers and friends… let us pray without covering our eyes and ears… and let us do it in peace, unarmed of revenge, with the sword of faith ‘against all hope’….
I invite you to sit with Mary, as in that Cenacle of Pentecost, when they were still afraid, and the doors were closed. I invite you to light a lamp as the Family of Carmel, to place ourselves before the Lord in adoration or rosary in hand, or in the silence of communion….
Holy Mary, Queen of Peace, silence the war and give us peace among our brothers and sisters, your children.
Fr Miguel Márquez Calle, OCD
Superior General
