Last Sunday I celebrated the 10 a.m. Mass at our Capuchin Parish in San Ġwann. After the Mass I have the habit of standing at the main door of the church to salute people as they are leaving. After talking to a family, a tearful woman, mother of four children, approached me and said: “Thank you Father for having prayed for the separated during the Eucharist. I felt so relieved! After eight years coming for the Mass in this church it was the first time that I have ever heard a priest praying for us. I have just gone to the sacristy and relayed this to the parish priest. Father, only God knows what we go through.”

This suffering woman left me speechless. I recognised that she was a 100 per cent right in what she was telling me. My spontaneous reply to her was a simple prayer addressed to God: “Lord, use this courageous woman to remind your consecrated ones to pray for our brothers and sisters who are separated.”

As priests we are duty-bound to care for the separated. This has bravely and clearly been spelled to us by the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio. What is said in reference to the divorced people can be easily applied to those who are separated and are in another relationship: “Together with the Synod, I earnestly call upon pastors and the whole community of the faithful to help the divorced, and with solicitous care to make sure that they do not consider themselves as separated from the Church, for as baptised persons they can, and indeed must, share in her life. They should be encouraged to listen to the word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of the Mass, to persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity and to community efforts in favour of justice, to bring up their children in the Christian faith, to cultivate the spirit and practice of penance and thus implore, day by day, God’s grace. Let the Church pray for them, encourage them and show herself a merciful mother, and thus sustain them in faith and hope” (§ 84).

Solicitous care means praying for the separated with the Christian community. Thanks to the Catholic Revival Movement, headed by Edward Spiteri, laypersons are making me aware that as a priest I must show love, respect and offer my spiritual support to these troubled people by including them in every Eucharistic celebration I celebrate. I urge you, my dear brothers in the priesthood, to pray for the separated when you celebrate the Eucharistic Sacrifice in your parishes and religious communities. In them, Christ is telling us anew: “I am thirsty.” Let us satiate His thirst for love by lovingly including them in the main liturgical prayer of the Church, the Eucharist. Pray for the separated!

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