"La forza della speranza" with a preface by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi
Published : 04/27/2021 08:20:20
Categories : News
"La forza della speranza. Pensieri in tempo di pandemia" is the new small book that enriches the series Celebrare. It is a small volume that collects a selection of reflections taken from the speeches given by Pope Francis dedicated to the pandemic and the strength of faith that gives hope. The meditations are embellished with photographs by Vatican Media showing the pontiff during the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing and during the extraordinary moment of prayer in time of epidemic that he presided over on the Sagrado of St Peter's Basilica on 27 March 2020.
"A spiritual vaccine to soothe the wounds that the virus has left in our souls," Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, who signed the preface, told Vatican News. It is an in-depth study of the pontiff's words and gestures and, at the same time, a focus on the lessons that the Covid-19 pandemic has had both on a socio-cultural and religious level. Cardinal Ravasi stressed that "this evil has taught many spiritual realities to believers and non-believers alike. [...] It has rewritten the scale of values that does not have at its summit money or power; [...] it has re-proposed the labours and joys of relationships that are not only virtual; it has simplified the superfluous and taught us essentiality; it has forced us to stare into the eyes of our loved ones at our own death; it has made us brothers and sisters of the many Job, giving us the right even to protest with God, to raise our questions and complaints to him. But above all it has revealed a supreme value that is human and religious inseparably, love" (p. 16). This small collection of messages is closed by a larger and more solemn text, the Holy Father's Prayer to the Virgin Mary for the month of May 2020 "whose motherhood," writes the prelate, "is invoked as a protective mantle that embraces all" (pg. 16).
The thoughts contained in "La forza della speranza" spur us on to live today and encourage us to face tomorrow. In his speeches, Pope Francis repeatedly describes the "aftermath" of the pandemic: "I hope," writes the Pontiff in his Letter to Popular Movements of 12 April 2020, "that this moment of danger will make us regain control of our lives, shake our sleeping consciences and produce a human and ecological conversion that puts an end to the idolatry of money and puts dignity and life at the centre" (p. 37). Together, as the Holy Father often reminds us, because on "this boat... we are all in it" (pg. 28).
