Dear friends,
Today, on the memorial of Pope St. John XXIII, we remember this wonderful Pope, full of unfailing optimism, hope and courage, who with his faith and boundless trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, drew down a fresh breath of the Spirit upon the world.
He set in motion a movement which still continues. The Catholic Church, still carries on the gift of the freshness of the Spirit that this saintly Pope invoked as he opened the Second Vatican Council.
Our spiritual father, Br. O. J. Victor, while praying fervently to know the origin of the unique charism of the Scripture gifted to him, and which we as his spiritual sons and daughters have inherited, was enlightened by God as to the intercession of Pope John XXIII who was shown to him in a heavenly vision as praying for him and opening the Scriptures in a new way to the Church.
By the great providence of God, on the very day of Pope John XXIII's memorial three years ago, our Community was approved by the Apostolic Vicar of Southern Arabia, H.E. Bishop Paul Hinder as a Public Association of the Vicariate. While returning thanks and praise to God, we pray today together with this Holy Pope:
May there be repeated thus in the Christian families the spectacle of the apostles gathered together in Jerusalem after the Ascension of Jesus to heaven, when the newborn Church was completely united in communion of thought and of prayer with Peter and around Peter, the shepherd of the lambs and of the sheep. And may the Divine Spirit deign to answer in a most comforting manner the prayer that rises daily to Him from every corner of the earth:
"Renew Your wonders in our time, as though for a new Pentecost, and grant that the holy Church, preserving unanimous and continuous prayer, together with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and also under the guidance of St. Peter, may increase the reign of the Divine Saviour, the reign of truth and justice, the reign of love and peace. Amen."