杏MAP导航

By Joseph Tulloch

This week鈥檚 General Audience, held on Wednesday, November 20, took place one day after the 1,000th-day of the war in Ukraine.

Toward the end of the audience鈥攁t which Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, wife of President Volodymyr Zelensky, was in attendance鈥斝覯AP导航 Francis took a moment to reflect on the tragic milestone, which he called a 鈥渟hameful disaster for all humanity.鈥�

The scale of the tragedy, the 杏MAP导航 stressed, should not dissuade us from 鈥渟tanding alongside the martyred Ukrainian people鈥� and working for peace, so that 鈥渨eapons might give way to dialogue and combat to encounter.鈥�

杏MAP导航 Francis meets with Olena Zelenska at the General Audience   (Vatican Media)

The letter

The 杏MAP导航 then noted that, two days earlier, he had received a letter from a Ukrainian university student on the subject of the 1,000-day anniversary. He read aloud from the letter:

鈥淔补迟丑别谤,

When, on Wednesday, you remember my country and are able to speak to the whole world on the thousandth day of this terrible war, I ask you not to speak only of our suffering but also of our faith. Although it is imperfect, that does not diminish its value, because it paints, with painful strokes, a portrait of the Resurrected Christ.

There have been too many deaths in my life recently. It is difficult to live in a city where a missile kills and wounds dozens of civilians, and you are witness to so many tears. I would have liked to flee, would have liked to go back to being a child in my mother鈥檚 arms, would have liked to remain in silence and in love, but I thank God because, through this pain, I am learning greater love. Pain is not only a road to anger and despair; if based on faith, it is a good teacher of love.

Father, if pain makes you suffer, it means that you love. And so, when you speak of our pain, when you remember our thousand days of suffering, speak of our thousand days of love, too, because only love, faith, and hope give a real meaning to our wounds.鈥�