Eternal God, praise be to you! You call us to follow Jesus Christ. And you want us, through our life as brothers, to be a parable of that communion which Christ brought for all humanity.

We confide to you all the things we have talked about over the last few days – the kindness so essential for our common life, the co-responsibility and cooperation between us, our will to widen our friendships so as to contribute to the search for a new face of the Church. We pray that you will give us hearts that are open for these conversations to bear fruit.

We thank you for our brothers in the fraternities whose lives make the Gospel present in very diverse situations. Show us how our fraternities can evolve in a changing world and in accordance with the changes that our community is experiencing.

Teach us to listen better to the whisper of your Holy Spirit, in us and in our common life. Increase our faith in the presence and in the strength of your Spirit which always revives our vocation. Your Spirit is the spring that never dries up. Help us to draw from this spring the courageous decisions that will allow the heritage of our community to be always renewed, in our desire to achieve a common creation supported by all the brothers.

Your Holy Spirit leads us to listen more to one another. You have given us the opportunity to experience this during these days of our Council. In listening to one another you give us new insights and the courage to put them into practice.

We entrust to you all that is going to be part of our live this year in community, in the confidence that you will guide us in the future as you have done until now. Keep us in joy and in a spirit of generosity.

We entrust to you the whole Church, the project "Together – the Gathering of the People of God", the journeys of the brothers to reach out to young people on different continents, the meetings in Taizé, Ljubljana and elsewhere, as well as the pastoral initiatives that our brothers will be undertaking in the fraternities.

And we ardently entrust to you all those who bear serious wounds, the victims of war, in Ukraine and elsewhere, the victims of sexual aggression and spiritual abuse, migrants, those who suffer from climate change, the sick and all those forgotten in our societies.
God of love, in Christ you give us a living hope. Grant that we may be faithful witnesses to this.

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