Rome – “In a world beset by fear and division, we want to continue believing that fraternity is possible. We want to be people who, with simplicity and courage, bear witness that peace begins with reconciled relationships, with words that build up, with gestures that welcome.” This is the message that the Sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles are sending during this Lenten season marked by wars, tensions, and conflicts around the world.
“Our hearts cannot remain indifferent,” they emphasize. “As NSA Sisters, we feel strongly called to safeguard hope and to be a voice of peace, precisely in this time of grace that Lent offers us. Peace is a gift, but also a commitment. It is a seed that grows to the extent that each of us nurtures it and makes it sprout.”
In line with the moments of prayer and spiritual mobilization to invoke the gift of peace promoted by the European Bishops’ Conference, the International Union of Superiors General, and various ecclesial bodies, the NSA sisters have joined in from the many places where they carry out their mission. “It is an invitation that crosses borders, uniting diverse communities, peoples, and vocations in a single supplication. Each community, each sister, carries in prayer the faces and stories they encounter every day: women, men, families, young people who long to live without fear, who dream of a possible future, who await the concrete hope of true peace.”
Remembering in particular “the sisters in Lebanon and the Lebanese people, marked by years of instability, economic crisis, and growing tensions, and now by continuous bombing in the south of the country, as far as the city of Beirut, we hold in our hearts all the regions wounded by violence: Ukraine, the Holy Land, the Sahel, Sudan, Myanmar, and many other often forgotten places. Every war is a defeat for humanity; Every life lost is a wound that affects us all. In this Lenten season, we wish to intensify our personal and communal prayer as part of a great chorus that resonates throughout Europe and the world.
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