Vigils of prayer, Rosary performances, Community and personal invocations. In recent weeks, faithful from all over the world have united in prayer for the Pope. “Everyone warns that his illness is an event that affects history, and only the Lord knows the mystery of history”, comments Mother Ignazia Angelini of the Benedictine monastery of Viboldon, at the gates of Milan, which last year – as the previous year – held the preparation meditations for the Synod Fathers in the Vatican. We ask her for the sense of praying for the sick and, in particular, for the sick Pope.
What does it mean to pray for a person who lives the disease?
«It means giving the blood of the soul, taking on the weight of those who suffer. It is a fundamental baptismal experience, so much so that the first Christian community was identified by prayer. Often in the monastery they ask us to pray for people in precarious situations, and then we need to know the name and other information to enter the mystery of pain. Praying for someone creates a bond, not only of knowledge or emotion, but a link in faith, real: we all live fragility as a crucial experience, which makes you despair or meet God “.
What is the sense of praying today for the Pope?
«Since he was elected, Francesco has always asked to pray for him, aware of his human disproportion to the task received. Praying for the Pope’s health today means responding to his appeal, sharing his weights, entering the mystery of his human, baptismal and ministerial vocation. And it is also a way of expressing jubilee hope. Just Francesco, in the bubble of the Jubilee, asked to collect the signs of the times and transform them into signs of hope. Just transforming a situation of infirmity, a fatal risk as a sign of hope is a typically spiritual operation, responding to the appeal of the spirit ».
Can you pray to ask for physical healing?
«Praying is not to try God, asking him to do something, how much to express his consent to his will. It is believing and saying that God is the Lord of history and we deliver ourselves to his will: it is not a demanding but a unite to those who suffer and bring their wounds to their body, recognize that they are exposed to indissoluble questions and answer believing. In prayer for healing we express the certainty that the disease will melt like the Lord wants. Jesus himself asked “this chalice” walks away “: he was fulfilled, but not in the way he expected”
What are the fruits of praying in the disease?
«For the community that prays, the fruits are those of the spirit: joy, love, peace, patience, self -dominion, mildness. It is necessary to know how to read the exists of the disease, whatever they are, as the presence of God in human history ».
And for the Church?
«Praying at the time of the concern for the Pope’s health, the Church is strengthened. Praying together also deepens the sense of synodality ».
The Pope benefits from these prayers?
«We are sure that the pope’s entrusting will lead to a liberation, we don’t know what type but we are sure. We think of San Pietro imprisoned, who thanks to prayer experiences the presence of the Angel who opens the doors of the prison. Or to Marta and his request for healing for his brother Lazzaro: Jesus fulfills it, but in a different way from what he asked, but Marta will then be capable of the highest profession of faith ».
In your community pray for the pontiff?
«Of course, in the monastery we pray with the choral prayer of the psalms. In my case there is also the memory of the Synod and other personal contact opportunities, in which the Pope also entrusted to the prayer of my community. The appeal to pray for him today is full of meat and blood, carved in my experience. While praying to the psalms, we find ourselves applying the prayer of the psalmist to the infirmity of Pope Francis. So, yesterday – to give an example -, praying to Psalm 41 (40), 4, with a smile, we found ourselves asking the Lord to “support him in the bed of pain, and to bend down to redo the bed”. And gladly we were also willing to help the Lord in this delicate service. Beyond the choral acts, the prayer for the Pope is a background thought these days ».
