Let us pray the Lord of the Harvest

39. Our document, that opened with thanksgiving to the Lord God, can not close without a prayer to the Most Holy Trinity, the source and destiny of every vocation.

"God the Father, source of love, who from all eternity calls to life and gives it in abundance, look upon this continent of Europe. Call her again, as You once called her; above all make her aware of Your call, of her Christian roots, of the responsibility which derives from this. Make her aware of her vocation to promote a culture of life, respect for the existence of every man in all its forms and in every instant, unity between peoples, welcoming the stranger and promoting civil and democratic forms of social life, so that Europe may be ever more united in peace and brotherhood.

Eternal Word, You who from all eternity welcome the love of the Father and respond to His call, open the hearts and minds of the young people of this continent so that they may learn to let themselves be loved by the One who conceived them in the image of His Son and, letting themselves be loved, may they have the courage to realise this image, which is Yours. Make them strong and generous, able to take a risk on Your Word, free to fly up high, enchanted by the beauty of following You. Raise up among them people to proclaim Your Gospel: priests, deacons, consecrated men and women, religious and laity, missionaries, monks and nuns, who with their lives know, in their turn, how to call and propose the following of Christ the Saviour.

Holy Spirit, love always young of God, voice of the Eternal one who never ceases to resonate and call, free the old continent from every spirit of sufficiency, from the culture of the "man without a vocation", from that fear that hinders us from taking risks and renders life flat and without taste, from that minimalism that creates tolerance of mediocrity and kills any interior slant and the authentic spirit of youth in the Church. Help our young people to rediscover the full meaning of following Jesus as the call to be fully themselves, fully and forever young, each according to a project planned particularly for him, unique-singular-unrepeatable. In a Europe that risks becoming ever older grant us the gift of new vocations that can bear witness to the "youthfulness" of God and the Church, universal and local, from East to West, and can promote projects of new sanctity, for the birth of a new Europe.

Holy Virgin, young daughter of Israel, whom the Father has chosen as the bride of the Spirit in order to generate His Son on earth, generate in the young people of Europe your same daring courage; that same courage that one day set you free to believe in a project greater than yourself, free to hope that God would have realised it. To you who are the mother of the Eternal Priest we entrust those young people called to the priesthood; to you who are the first consecrated by the Father we entrust those young people who choose to belong totally to the Lord, the only treasure and totally loved good, in the religious and consecrated life; to you who lived, like no other creature, the solitude of the fullest intimacy with the Lord Jesus we entrust those who leave the world to dedicate their whole life to prayer in the monastic life; to you, who generated the early Church and assisted it with maternal love, we entrust all the vocations of this Church, that they may proclaim, today as then, to all the peoples, that Jesus Christ is Lord, in the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of God the Father! AMEN."

Rome, 6 January 1998, the Epiphany of the Lord.

Pio Card. Laghi
President

José Saraiva Martins
Titular Archbishop of Tuburnica
Vice-President