Lord Jesus,
this evening, at the invitation of Pope Leo XIV, from East to West,
all those who look to you, the Crucified and Risen One, have gathered together.
To ask you to shower us all with your great Easter blessing,
a blessing of PEACE.
Did you not offer it one day, once and for all?
God’s gifts know no bounds of space or time.
We gather to place ourselves under this blessing, with our world in the grip of
conflicts of unprecedented violence, which rob millions of innocent people of their lives.
You are among them; you are one of them.
And you are also praying fervently with us
that a rainbow of reconciliation may rise once more,
between peoples, between continents, between cultures and between religions.
May your Peace finally prevail, Jesus, the Risen One!
But above all, grant us the Spirit
so that we may know how to welcome it within us,
this unarmed and disarming peace.