This week’s service has been prepared by the brothers and sisters of the Community in Mehagne (Belgien).
Reflection text
Striving for Peace and Reconciliation
Excerpt from the « Charta Oecumenica » signed in Rome on November 5 2025, p. 18-19.
https://www.ccee.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/Charta-oecumenica-PDF-con-guideline-A4-final2.pdf
History demonstrates that war is ineffective at resolving controversies between nations. While non-violent solutions are always preferable, we recognize that we are sometimes confronted with the tragic reality of choosing between allowing violence to continue or using force to end it. As churches, we need to implore peace from God as His gift, acknowledging that peace also needs to be actively built day by day, through works of justice and love.
Peace is not just the absence of war. There is no true peace without fairness, truth, justice, and solidarity. That is why we affirm that war and violence are a defeat for humanity and that only in peace and through peace can respect for human dignity and its inalienable rights be guaranteed. We are converted to peace when we “beat swords into ploughshares” (Isa 2:4).
Christ teaches us to love our enemies (Mt 5:44). Our faith does not allow us to despair of adversaries. We do not equate those who err with their errors, and we do not lose hope for them. Reconciliation includes asking for forgiveness and offering it, as well as agreeing upon appropriate redress. Striving for peace and reconciliation means creating spaces where people of goodwill come together to be ready for sincere and ongoing dialogue, preparing the ground for fresh advances in justice towards the peaceful coexistence of all human beings.
Intercessions
To be adapted or modified according to the place and circumstance
In Brussels, the capital of Europe, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Churches live side by side, along with a hundred Evangelical Churches of diverse cultural origins. Several of them are engaged in projects of community life and houses of prayer.
We pray to you, Lord, to strengthen the spiritual renewal of all these Christian communities through listening, fraternal dialogue, the welcoming of the younger generation, and concern for the poor.May every Christian community in Belgium become a place where God works for unity.
Lord, send your Holy Spirit!
Beginning of November, a gathering was organized by CHARIS (the International Service for Catholic Charismatic Renewal) with Mary Healy, on the theme “Holy Spirit, give everything!” The participants were renewed in the Holy Spirit and in their desire to make God’s love known to all. During this weekend, many young people aged 18 to 35 came forward and they were prayed over by the brothers.
Lord, we bless you for these young people: grant them the grace to be your witnesses in our increasingly de-Christianized society.
We also pray for the young people of the Antwerp dormitory, run by the Chemin Neuf Community, and for all the young people journeying with us in Brussels and Liège.
Lord, send your Holy Spirit!
In recent weeks, Eastern Catholic churches have experienced significant events:
– On October 19, the Armenian Catholics celebrated the canonization of Ignatios Maloyan, one of their bishops, martyred in 1915 after exhorting his faithful to remain steadfast in the faith.
– And on November 15, the Romanian Greek-Catholics welcomed their new Major Archbishop, Claudiu-Lucian Pop, installed in Blaj by the prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches.
Lord, we ask you to continue to bless and guide our brothers and sisters of the East, so that their Churches may preserve the faith handed down to them by their ancestors.Lord, send your Holy Spirit!
The Pope’s visit to Turkey for the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea was an opportunity for an ecumenical prayer at the site of the archaeological excavations of the ancient basilica of Saint Neophytos.
Lord, rekindle today in each of our Churches the same Spirit that inspired the conciliar fathers of Nicaea – their desire “to express their faith while seeking what unites.”Lord, send your Holy Spirit!
Prayer for Christian unity
Lord Jesus, who prayed that we might all be one,
we pray to you for the unity of Christians,
according to your will,
according to your means.
May your Spirit enable us
to experience the suffering caused by division,
to see our sin
and to hope beyond all hope.
Amen.
(Prayer written by members of the Chemin Neuf Community
inspired by a prayer of Father Paul Couturier)