Filipino Church Prays for Christians of India
By Santosh Digal
10/25/2008
Asia News (www.asianews.it/)
The archbishop of Palo calls for the faithful to remember the persecuted Indian Christians in their daily prayers. Appeals are growing in the majority Catholic country not to forget their persecuted brethren.
MANILA (AsiaNews) - The archbishop of Palo, Jose Serofia Palma, has written a message to call upon bishops, priests, religious, and laity to pray for the persecuted Christians in India. The Filipino prelate addresses his appeal above all to the faithful of his diocese on the island of Leyte, where more than a million Catholics live. But the appeal for daily prayers on behalf of the Christians persecuted by Hindu extremism is addressed to all Catholics in the Philippines, who represent more than 80% of the population there.
The initiative of the bishop, who is a member of the commission for international Eucharistic congresses at the Filipino bishops' conference, demonstrates the solidarity of Catholics in the country with the Christians of India.
Prayer is the way whereby we, the children of God, establish communication with God our Father. It is our greatest weapon since it is the major weakness of God. It enables us to talk to God, praising Him, giving Him thanks, telling Him how sorry we are for the wrong we have done and to stand up again despite these obstacles to loving Him. It is by establishing this interaction that we deepen our relationship with Him. Thus, when we pray, we do not only pray for ourselves but also for others.
Moreover, we should pray as a community. This is one way to show our concern for one another. That is why we need to participate in the Holy Mass, where we pray as a community. When we do so, we not only pray for ourselves, we also pray for the whole congregation participating in the Mass.
Our ‘pagpanglakaton padulong sa bug-os nga paghili-usa’ can only be made possible when we all join and become one in our prayer as a community, especially in our basic ecclesial communities.
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