ASIA/KAZAKHSTAN - The Bishop of Karaganda "The example of Veronica, icon of Christ, to be reborn to new hope"

Wednesday, 13 April 2022 easter wars peace conversion

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Karaganda (Agenzia Fides) - "Prayer changes hearts and converts them to God so that they can welcome the gift of the Spirit, who with love heals the world of hatred and grants peace. We invite all the faithful to seriously live our conversion, because peace begins with a man who allows his heart to be changed by Jesus, who died on the cross and rose again. With all our hearts, we invoke the protection of Mary, Queen of Peace, on the people of Kazakhstan, so that they may keep their faith alive in our hearts and make us heralds of the hope and love of the risen Christ". This is the message sent to Fides, on the occasion of Holy Week and in view of Easter, by Msgr. Adelio Dell’Oro, Bishop of the Diocese of Karaganda. In the letter distributed to all the communities of the diocese, the missionary Bishop invites us to take an example from a key figure in Jesus' path to Golgotha: "On the path to Calvary, there is Veronica, who entered history for a linen cloth, with which she wiped the face of Christ, drenched in tears and blood. This woman does not have a face, she does not have a history, and yet a station on the Way of the Cross was dedicated to her. She was an anonymous woman, but that day she was born into the world and was given the name 'Veronica', a true icon of Christ, as Karol Wojtyla wrote in one of his poems: 'Your name was born in the very instant in which your heart became an effigy. Your name was born from what you gazed upon'. Receiving the name is like being born again, it is a new beginning". Lent, recalls the bishop, has begun on the same days that a new conflict began in the world in Ukraine: "Our hearts are torn by what is happening in Ukraine, and we cannot forget the wars in other parts of the world, like Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia. What does our world ask for more today, if not the gift of being reborn? We have to look at Christ and allow ourselves to be looked at by Him. In this way we can imitate Veronica, so that we too can be reborn looking at and cleaning the face of Christ, as we can see in each person who suffers the face of Jesus and embrace his flesh". For this reason, Archbishop Dell'Oro concludes, "we are called to be witnesses of a hope that knows how to overcome present circumstances, that knows how to defeat evil, that knows how to participate in the victory of Christ. In his Passion, Jesus, out of love, took on all the pain and human anguish". The same hope that the possible trip of Pope Francis to Kazakhstan - he says in conclusion - could revive. (LF/PA) (Agenzia Fides, 13/4/2022)