PRAYER OF THE
POPE JOHN PAUL II
For Peace
“Deliver us from
evil”! Reciting these words of Christ’s prayer, it is very difficult to give
them a different content from that one that opposes peace, that destroy it,
that threaten it. Let us pray therefore: Deliver us from war, from hatred, from
destruction of human lives. Do not allow us to kill! Do not allow the use of
those means which are in the service of death and destruction and whose power,
range of action, and precision go beyond the limits known hitherto.
Do not allow them
to use ever! “Deliver us from evil!” Defend us from war! From any war, Father
who are in heaven. Father of life and giver of peace, the Pope, the son of a
nation which, during its history, and particularly in our century, has been
among those most sorely tried in the horror, the cruelty, and the cataclysm of
war, supplicates you. He supplicates You for all the people in the world, for
all the countries and for all the continents. He supplicates You in the name of
Christ, the Prince of Peace.
Mother, you know
what it means to clasp in your arms the dead body of your Son, of him to whom
you gave birth. Spare all mothers on this earth the death of their sons, the
torments, the slavery, the destruction of war, the persecutions, the
concentration camps, the prisons. Keep for them the joy of birth, of
sustenance, of the development of man and of his life. In the name of this
life, in the name of the birth of Lord, implore peace for us and justice in the
world.
Mother of Peace,
in all the beauty and the majesty of your motherhood, which the church exalts
and the world admires, we pray to you: Be with us at every moment! Let this New
Year be a year of peace, in virtue of the birth and the death of your Son! Amen
