Papal Mass in Beirut: a call to communion and witness
(Vatican Radio ) Tracey McClure reports from Beirut's City Centre Waterfront on Pope
Benedict's last morning in Lebanon during which he presided over Holy Mass and consigned
the Post-Synodal Exhortation "Ecclesia in Medio Oriente" . Listen: A
sea of white baseball caps and a backdrop of Lebanon’s snow covered cedars for the
altar – an image that reminds one how the Lebanese love to say they can go for a day
skiing in the mountains and then take a swim along the shore of this Mediterranean
nation. Sunday’s Mass overlooking that sea was one of communion and witness -
the Catholic Churches of East and West represented by their Patriarchs and bishops
celebrating with the Pope of Rome this historic day when he delivered to them the
document they’ve all been waiting for: the Apostolic Exhortation concluding the 2010
Synod of Bishops for the Middle East. “Communion and Witness” in fact, was the
theme of that synod, and here at Sunday’s mass, we saw the Latin rite interspersed
with chants and prayers of the eastern and Byzantine churches. In fact, the more than
350,000 people here came from all of the region’s seven Catholic rites and Orthodox
and Protestants participated too in fraternal ecumenical communion. The lecturn
of the Mass a simple but poignant symbol of peace: the Bible cradled amid the gnarled
branches of a centuries-old olive tree recalling the millennia that Christians have
lived in these lands. Sunday’s Gospel plunged us back into Jesus’s time, finding
him on his way to Jerusalem where he would be crucified and then resurrected in a
Holy Land of which Lebanon is a part. Pope Benedict called this moment a “turning
point” in Jesus’ life. Perhaps this region, with its grand hopes of freedom and human
rights but ripped apart by conflict, is also finding itself at a turning point. And
Pope Benedict showed Christians here the way to go, encouraging them to prepare for
the Year of Faith beginning in October and being true servants to the needy and their
neighbor. He said Christians have a vocation to serve others “freely and impartially.”
“Consequently", he said, "in a world where violence constantly leaves behind its
grim trail of death and destruction, to serve justice and peace is urgently necessary
for building a fraternal society.” He said Christians can render an essential
testimony here in cooperation with all people of good will and by being peacemakers
wherever they may be. And he challenged clergy and lay people to put the Apostolic
Exhortation - a roadmap to their future - into practice in their lives, to rediscover
life’s spiritual dimension and to work for greater communion within their Church,
among fellow Christians and all others. At the Angelus prayer, Pope Benedict launched
a dramatic appeal for peace in Syria and neighboring countries where the “tragedy
of the conflicts and violence” are all too familiar. “Why so many dead?” he asked.
“Violence and hatred invade people’s lives,” he said, lamenting that “the first victims
are women and children.” He appealed to the international community and to Arab countries,
“that, as brothers, they might propose workable solutions respecting the dignity,
the rights and the religion of every human person! Those who wish to build peace,”
he said, “ must cease to see in the other an evil to be eliminated.” Invoking
the intercession of Mary, Our Lady of Lebanon whom both Christians and Muslims revere,
the Pope prayed for “the gift of peaceful hearts, the silencing of weapons” and an
end to all violence in this country, in Syria and all the Middle East “May men
understand,” he said “that they are all brothers!” With the Pope in this land
of ancient olive trees, cedars and of hopes, I’m Tracey McClure