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The Annunciation

Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us. I am not asking you to remove them from the world, but to protect them from the Evil One. I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will believe in me (Jn 17:11.15.20).

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In the General Intercessions or Prayer of the Faithful, the congregation prays for the needs of the Church and the world, responding to the invitation made by the celebrant.

As a rule, this is the sequence of intentions:

- For the needs of the Church: for the pope, the bishops, the shepherds of souls; for the missions, the unity of Christians, vocations, etc.

- For public authorities and the salvation of the world: for peace among nations, rulers, development of people, social justice; for a bountiful harvest; for freedom, prosperity, etc.

- For those oppressed by any need: for the poor, the persecuted; for the sick, broken homes, the jobless; for those in jail, unbelievers; for those who doubt, etc.

- For the local community: including the deceased, the absent, the destitute; for the dying; for the clergy, the families, for the newly wed couples, etc.

We make these intentions our own either by silent prayer or by a response said together after each intention, such as these:

In England and Wales, following a very old tradition, the petitions are followed by a beautiful prayer to our Lady, the Hail Mary.

We end the Prayer of the Faithful with the concluding prayer said by the priest, asking God to accept our petitions.

With this, the liturgy of the word comes to an end.

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To pray for the needs of the Church and of the world is an early Christian custom. St Paul admonishes Timothy, one of his disciples:

My advice is that, first of all, there should be prayers offered for everyone --petitions, intercessions and thanksgiving-- and especially for kings and others in authority, so that we may be able to live religious and reverent lives in peace and quiet (1 Tim 2:1‑3).

St Justin (year 150) bears witness to the existence of this part of the Mass in his time:

After the homily of the bishop we all stand and raise our prayers...for our own selves, for those who have been just lighted up [baptized], and for all the rest, found elsewhere.[1]

The people responded with Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy) or any other invocation. The bishop intervened just at the end to say the final prayer.[2]

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Lay persons fulfill their vocation in the middle of the world by transforming it according to Gospel values. Therefore, we must love all honest environments and situations of human life. "The world awaits us. Yes, we love the world passionately because God has taught us to: Sic Deus dilexit mundum...  --God so loved the world. And we love it because it is there that we fight our battles in a most beautiful war of charity, so that everyone may find the peace that Christ has come to establish."[3] There, we will be able to make present and operative the new life that flows from the redemption only if we remain deeply rooted in the eucharistic memorial of Christ's sacrifice.

All of us gathered in the temple stir up our priestly heart to intercede for the salvation of all and for all their needs, spiritual as well as material. Thus, we will be ready to spread the whole message of salvation, "keeping in mind the true meaning of ethics in which the distinction between good and evil is not relativized, the real meaning of sin, the necessity for conversion, and the universality of the law of fraternal love."[4] "If, like some people, we were to think that to keep a clean heart, a heart worthy of God, means 'not mixing it up, not contaminating it' with human affection, we would become insensitive to other people's pain and sorrow. We would be capable only of an 'official charity,' something dry and soulless.

"A man or a society that does not react to suffering and injustice and makes no effort to alleviate them is still distant from the love of Christ's heart. While Christians enjoy the fullest freedom in finding and applying various solutions to these problems, they should be united in having one and the same desire to serve mankind. Otherwise their Christianity will not be the word and life of Jesus; it will be a fraud, a deception of God and man."[5]

The law of fraternal love is a consequence of our divine filiation. All those who are called to share the same faith are brothers, children of the same Father. We realize we cannot enclose ourselves in an exclusively individualistic search for God. Each one must commit himself to help the others get closer to God and to give an answer to the present needs of the world. "A man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God, whom he has never seen" (1 Jn 4:20). Each one must be ready to serve the others, helping to find solutions to their problems and to unjust situations.

However, we are reminded that:

An effective defense of justice needs to be based on the truth of mankind, created in the image of God and called to the grace of divine sonship. The recognition of the true relationship of human beings to God constitutes the foundation of justice to the extent that it rules the relationships between people. That is why the fight for the rights of man, which the Church does not cease to reaffirm, constitutes the authentic fight for justice.

The truth of mankind requires that this battle be fought in ways consistent with human dignity.

The acute need for radical reforms of the structures which conceal poverty and which are themselves forms of violence, should not let us lose the fact that the source of injustice is the hearts of men. Therefore it is only by making an appeal to the moral potential of the person and to the constant for interior conversion, that social change will be brought about which will truly be in the service of man.[6]

1. St Justin, Apol., I, 65 & 67.

2. A. Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia, no. 619.

3. J. Escriva de Balaguer, Furrow (New York: Scepter, 1987), no. 290.

4. Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of Liberation", 6 August 1984, XI, no. 17.

5. J. Escriva de Balaguer, Christ Is Passing By, no. 167.

6. Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "Theology of Liberation", XI, nos. 6‑8.

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