May the event promoted in Rome, entitled “L’Anima e il Tempo”, today in its second day, bear fruit. The Vatican secretary of state wishes it in a message in which he welcomes the initiative proposed by three publishers, which intends to combine the spiritual element with the concrete one of reality. “Our time – underlines the cardinal – knows wars, famines, climate change, but it is one in which God calls us to live”
Vatican News
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, received greetings and best wishes for his work at “L’Anima e il Tempo. Festival of spirituality” which opened yesterday evening in Rome. “I’m sorry I can’t be with you at the inauguration”, writes the cardinal in a message addressed to the promoters of the event – Edizioni Frate Indovino, Edizioni Cantagalli and Edizioni Città Nuova – which will end on Sunday 16 October.
We need to listen to each other and look into each other’s eyes
Cardinal Parolin welcomes the initiative organized at a time when participation in public events after the pandemic is recovering, not without difficulty, then underlines: “It is nice that publishers who share the same faith and the same inspiration , in a situation that is not easy for their sector, come together to invite discussion, comparison, in-depth analysis. We need to look each other in the eye, to listen to each other, to talk to each other, to dialogue, to get out of the often self-referential world of social media average”.
Time is what God calls us to live in
Then commenting on the title of the Festival, “The Soul and Time”, the Secretary of State writes that the soul is “the call to our spiritual being, to the umbilical cord that binds us to the Heavenly Father, to our destiny”, and time, “the dimension in which we are inexorably immersed (…) is ‘our time’, that is, the time in which God calls us to live, to work, to put our talents into play, to bear witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ”. Parolin therefore refers to the dramatic moment we are experiencing and writes: “How can we fail to remember the tragedy of war in the heart of Europe and of the many ongoing wars? How can we fail to recall the consequences of the pandemic and the lack of adequate care for so many people in the world? How can we not remember hunger, thirst, famine? How can we not remember climate change and migration?”.
The commitment to the future of man and the world
Finally, the cardinal observes that to all this is added a general feeling of loss and loneliness, even in a hyper-connected world. The question of meaning, such as the commitment to build a more humane and just world, for a policy and an economy that put the common good and the protection of creation at the centre: “These are challenges – underlines Parolin – that concern us all “. Hence the hope that these days of meetings in Rome “will bear fruit for those who will participate and for everyone”.
Parolin at the Festival of Spirituality: the challenges of this time concern us all – Vatican News