Today is Oct. 11, the optional memorial of St. John XXIII, pope.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns: “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?” (Lk 11:17-18).
In a journal entry on the 10th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood — in 1914 — then-Father Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli wrote this mediation on the Church:
And what of the Church in this tumult? Save her, save her, O Lord. Ten years ago, when for the first time, I celebrated the sacrifice of the Mass over the tomb of St. Peter in Rome — O blessed memory! — I had for the pope and for the Church one great thought, one fervent prayer. During these ten years that thought and that prayer have grown ever more insistent. O Lord, in these days of storm amidst the clash of nations, give your Church liberty, unity and peace.
Just days before Roncalli wrote that meditation, World War I had broken out, throwing Europe into chaos. In the years that followed, Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, would witness nation turn against nation, people turn against people, and house turn against house.
As pope, he wrote an encyclical urging the cause of peace at the outbreak of the Cold War. And it was Pope John XXIII who opened the Second Vatican Council to engage the modern world. As he put it in a radio address, “The world in fact needs Christ: and it is the Church that must bring Christ to the world.”
Only a united Church, only a kingdom united in Christ, could stand. In his last recorded words, Pope St. John XIII said: “My time on Earth is drawing to a close. But Christ lives on and continues his work in the Church. Souls, souls, ut omnes unum sint (that all may be one).”
A prayer invoicing the intercession of Pope St. John XXIII:
Almighty ever-living God, who in Pope Saint John XXIII have given a living example of Christ, the Good Shepherd, to shine throughout the whole world, grant us, we pray, that, through his intercession, we may joyfully pour out an abundance of Christian charity. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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