Faithful invited to pray for Synod of Bishops

The Vatican is asking all baptised people, regardless of whether they will be in Rome, to participate in October’s assembly of the Synod of Bishops with their prayers.

In a letter directed to all bishops released on Friday, Synod secretary-general Cardinal Mario Grech asked the world’s bishops “to pray for the Synod and to urge every Christian community in your particular church, especially monastic communities, toward unanimous and incessant prayer”.

“The Synod is first and foremost an event of prayer and listening does not solely involve the members of the synodal assembly, but every baptised person, every particular Church,” the letter read. “Indeed, all are called in this moment to join ourselves to the communion of prayer and in the insistent invocation of the Holy Spirit so it may guide us in the discernment of what the Lord asks today of his Church.”

The Cardinal’s letter includes a blessing to be recited at the end of Sunday Masses on September 24 and October 1, the two Sundays before the assembly opens on October 4.

He also sent out prayer intentions for the Church, bishops and other participants in the assembly, theologians, young people and all Christians. One asks that “the entire people of God, in a dynamism of communion, may feel that they are truly participating in the life of the Church”.

In a statement, the Vatican said the letter also was sent to the leaders of the Eastern Catholic churches “with a request to implement a similar blessing and intercessions in their Divine Liturgies”.

In his letter, Cardinal Grech wrote, “To pray for the synodal assembly, to intercede for all of its members, firstly the Holy Father who so often asks us to pray for him, is to realise the highest level of participation.”