“This species of demolish can be chased away only with prayer and fasting”, reads the Gospel (Mk 9:29). These are words that speak to us today, in the face of the demons of violence, hatred, division. “My name is Legion, because there are many,” says the devil in the Gospel according to Marco (5,9). Fasting and praying means believing that the Lord can break chains that seem indestructible.
In fact, there is a practice that crosses the history of the Church and that returns every time humanity is faced with the horror of the war: fasting and prayer for peace. Leone XIV also did so during the general hearing, inviting us to this day after tomorrow, Friday 22 August. They are not marginal gestures, nor an intimate refuge: they are the language of the heart that seeks God and, in doing so, has the saving power to transform the story that we are experiencing in such a delicate and crucial moment for the fate of the world, after the top in Alaska and negotiations that took place in Washington. Fasting is not just renouncing food. It is to train the body and the spirit that rediscovers the essential, it is a saying “no” to the superfluous to open space to what really matters: fraternity, solidarity, justice. Jesus himself fasting for 40 days. Praying, together, is more than pronouncing words: it is the world, with its wounds, in the hands of the Lord.
In times of war the voice of the Christians – combined with that of many men and women of good will – rises to invoke the gift of peace. Even Pope Francis, several times, had recalled that “peace is built with his hands and heart”, and that “fasting and prayer are powerful spiritual weapons”. His successor does not differ from this magisterium. Prayer opens his eyes on the needs of others, on the tears of the victims, on the urgency of not resigning the logic of weapons. Fasting, in the same way, becomes a concrete gesture of sharing: what we save can become help for those who have nothing, transforming a personal renunciation as a sign of universal love. Thus, when the Church invites days of fasting and prayer for peace, he does not ask us to perform simple rites, but to feel part of a community that carries the pain of the world on his shoulders. Peace is not a utopia: it is a responsibility. And it begins with our heart, nourished by prayer and paradoxically from fasting, capable of shouting to heaven and committing to earth.
