Divine Mercy’s amazing moment with the Armenian people
Beirut (AsiaNews) – Tomorrow’s Divine Mercy celebration in Saint Peter's Basilica will be an amazing moment for Armenians, a moment to commemorate the unspeakable brutality that was visited upon them collectively in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, between 1915 and 1918.
Will Pope Francis say anything to Karekin II and Aram, Catholicos of Echmiadzin (Armenia) and Antelias I (Lebanon), Nerses Bedros XIX, the Patriarch of Catholic Armenians, and the Armenians from around the world who will attend the Mass the pontiff will celebrate for them, other than what the feast of Divine Mercy says, namely words of trust, strength and forgiveness?
Endorsed by Saint Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who died in 1938, the feast day was established by John Paul II as God’s response to the tragic times in which we live. Our age plunges back into the 19th century, and manifests itself today in the disorientation of the western world, a time when whole parts of the Christian presence in the East are collapsing under the blows of a new barbarism that claims to be a return to the sources of Islam.
We should hear what Emmanuel Mounier has to say about the crisis of the West. In one of the first pages of his introduction to existentialisms, he described it as "the end of the evangelical age," like the "death of God" that Nietzsche had announced in the 19th century to the men "who, even after having been responsible for it, dared not accept it as a fact.”
Such a spiritual night lasted until the turn of the 21st century when, following the silent collapse of the Christian faith in the West and its current physical collapse in the East.
In his encyclical letter ‘Rich in mercy’ of 1980, John Paul II spoke more explicitly about mercy, saying that it is not simply an “attribute of God" but its very same name.
In admirable arguments that deserve further thought, the pope showed that mercy is "the most perfect incarnation of justice" because it alone is capable of 'restoring man to himself "(14).
Certainly, the memory of the Armenian Genocide will never be erased. The same goes for all other genocides, historical evidence of what man’s sinful demons may inflict on his fellow men.
In commemorating the Armenian Genocide in Saint Peter’s, on the Sunday of the Divine Mercy, the unjust suffering of all the peoples throughout history will take centre stage, regardless of religious affiliation or race.
Of course, the order of justice will not disappear, Jean-Paul II said, but the human city will be built patiently, laboriously, with the tools of peace instead of war.
It is in this spirit that Francis will speak to Armenians in a language that John Paul II used in 2001 during his pastoral visit to Armenia.
At the time, John Paul II chose his words carefully, clearing referring to the genocide, but without blaming Turkey, speaking instead of the "terrible violence" and "big disaster".
Francis might address a "free Armenia" (as John Paul II put it), not an Armenia captive of Communism, or an Armenia scattered around the world; nevertheless, he will call on its people to assume their regained freedom.
On Thursday, when he met the patriarch of the Armenian Catholics in a private visit, he called for "concrete gestures of reconciliation", in accordance with the laws of nations and states rather than resistance and liberation movements.
Sunday's ceremony will have an ecumenical aspect with the proclamation of Saint Gregory of Narek as a Doctor of the Universal Church. Unlike the ecumenism of the martyrs, which Armenians have so painfully but gloriously experienced, this ecumenism will be of the Christian faith from patristic times.
A joint Christological Declaration signed in Rome in 1996 by Pope John Paul II and Karekin I, Catholicos of All Armenians, had already brought the Armenian Catholic Church and Armenian Apostolic Church closer together in their theological understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation.
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