Mexico City, Mexico, Mar 5, 2009 / 09:53 am
The bishops of the ecclesiastical province of Chihuahua have exhorted “those who are involved in violence” to be reconciled with God and change their lives in order to stop Mexico and the state of Chihuahua from continuing to be “stained with blood.”
“We ask them to consider that no one’s life may be taken. We cry out with a shepherd’s heart: ‘Repent and change your lives.’ God is willing to forgive you, but this forgiveness implies being willing to reverse course, to repair the harm and to remove oneself from this activity of death,” the bishops said.
According to the Mexican media, 2009 has already seen 381 homicides in the state of Chihuahua. “The figures speak for themselves,” the bishops noted.
They pointed out that the crisis reveals there is “a lack of spirituality” which demands that Mexicans “turn back to God and to life” and allow Him to be a part of society, political life, schools and families. Conversion, they said, is Christ’s invitation to a total and radical change of attitude, as “we can no longer negotiate with the evil we have allowed to enter, and we need to change from the inside out.”
“It’s not only the government, the military or our prisons that can solve what is happening. All of us, by changing from the inside out, can build a new world. Only new hearts can make a new society. And only God can change our hearts, if we let Him,” they reminded.
We must return “to the perennial principles: respect for life, the dignity of the human person above and beyond the pursuit of money, legitimate work, the rule of law that protects and regulates relationships between individuals and society and honesty,” the bishops asserted.