(8 Feb 06 - ZENIT) Here is a translation of the last letter published by Father Andrea
Santoro, in the magazine Window to the Middle East, which he founded in Italy.
The
60-year-old priest was shot and killed Sunday while praying in his parish in Trabzon,
Turkey.
* * *
Beloved,
I am writing
from Rome, where I have spent three weeks before returning to Turkey. They have been
very intense days, dedicated to testimonies, meetings, catechesis, conferences, and
times of prayer. Everything has been oriented to promote information and knowledge
between the Middle East, seen through my personal experience, and our West, in line
with the objective of Window to the Middle East.
I have found everywhere
interest and participation, a sincere desire to understand and to establish bonds
of communion. I have seen the importance and the possibility of undertaking an exchange
of spiritual gifts between these two worlds. The Middle East, great "holy land," where
God decided to communicate himself in a special way with man, has its riches and the
capacity, thanks to the light that God has always infused, to illuminate our Western
world.
But the Middle East has its darkness, its problems, often tragic,
and its "voids." It needs, therefore, in turn that that Gospel that came from there
be sowed again and that the presence of Christ be proposed again there. It is a reciprocal
"re-evangelization" and an enrichment that the two worlds can exchange.
Meanwhile,
in Trabzon, the minute Christian community has met every Sunday morning to celebrate
the Liturgy of the Word and the Church has been opened twice a week to Muslims, under
the responsibility of a trustworthy person. I will let you know how it goes.
I
greet you, commending these reflections to you and exhorting you to always put faith
in contact with the present moment. It must not be an abstract and generic faith,
but a faith like that of the first "beginnings," which has been transmitted to us
from generation to generation. As the Gospel says, leaven has a mysterious capacity
to ferment the dough, if it comes into contact with it -- the dough of all times,
all places, all generations.
Moreover, Jesus said: "I am the light
of the world, he who follows me will not walk in darkness." If his light illuminates
us, not only will it illuminate every situation, even the most tragic, but in addition
we too, as He always said, will be light. The tenuous light of a candle illuminates
a house, an extinguished lamp leaves everything in darkness. May he shine in us with
his Word, with his Spirit, with the sap of his saints. May our life be the wax that
is consumed willingly.