Every month Pope Francis publishes an intention and asks Catholics worldwide to keep that as the focus of our prayers. During the month of July, the Holy Father calls on all to become “architects of dialogue and friendship” to solve the conflicts and causes of division that exist in society and among individual people. Only through dialogue, he says, is it possible to avoid the constant polarisation and social enmity that destroy so many relationships.
The Holy Father asks that we pray to construct the common good with men and women who extend a hand to each other, and especially to always be at the side of the “most impoverished and vulnerable, those on the peripheries”.
We Are One With You
O God, we are one with you. You have made us one with you.
You have taught us that if we are open to one another, you dwell in us.
Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realise that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection.
O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept you, and we thank you, and we adore you, and we love you with our whole being, because our being is your being, our spirit is rooted in your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes you present in the world, and which makes you witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious.
— From Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
