Rome, Italy, Apr 10, 2005 / 22:00 pm
During the celebration of Holy Mass at his titular church in Rome, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz, Archbishop of Santiago, Chile, recalled that the role of Christians is that of evangelizing in cities.
Meditating upon the Gospel for the Third Sunday of Easter, which recounts the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Cardinal Errazuriz said that “just as the disciples of Emmaus, after encountering the Lord, returned to the city of Jerusalem to announce the Good News, so also Christians today return to the city, not with fear, nor as a place of death, but rather with the desire to proclaim the Gospel.”
At the Church of St. Mary of Peace in Rome, which was packed with a large number of Chileans who live in Rome, Cardinal Errazuriz noted that, “Christians are not prophets of gloom, but rather the ferment of peace and hope amidst a city that is in need of visible signs.”
“We return to be nourished by Jesus, by the Christian community, and to proclaim the Good News of the Gospel in the midst of the city, without fear, and filled with the hope that the encounter with the Risen One gives us,” he concluded.