Prayer and Peace

Surely everyone wants peace. Surely any believer would believe that prayer is powerful. So who would be against the peace initiative of Pope Francis in a "together praying" event at the Vatican Gardens. So, let's just hold our peace and pray.
As a tourist, I have entered a Mosque and Buddhist Temples. I have prayed with Protestants, in spite of, some differences.
Many had invoked that it was all in keeping with Jesus' prayer before Ascension, John 17:21 "That they all may be ONE; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be ONE in US: that the world may believe that thou hast SENT ME."
The unity and oneness that Jesus desires is a unity with Him. It is "one in faith" that Jesus is the Messiah sent by God. It is being one with the Holy Trinity.
If what we really want is any kind of unity then we can simply submit to the United Nations or to the New World Order. Still, we do not because it is Truth that we ultimately desire communion with. We were created for the Truth... to find it and then, to accept or reject it.
For all the good intentions of the "peace and prayer" initiative and it's warm gesture to seek resolution to world problems, there will be an unsettling feeling that the Truth is being obscured.

The Invisible Walls in the Holy Land

One the Embrace, Many the Divisions by Sandro Magister

Holy Land and the Leaders

I don't really know but there is something eerie with Pope Francis' apostolic journey to the Holy Land.

There isn't really much Catholic commentary about it but there are news from non-Catholics. Arab Newspaper: Maronite patriarch's Jerusalem visit would be 'historic sin'. The pope who I see as a great politician and to my opinion a terrible pope seems to be going overboard using the barque of Peter.

The politically tone deaf pope hits hard on the pope's actions in the Holy Land.

"The logo also expresses this desire for unity, representing the embrace of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew, the first two disciples called by Jesus in Galilee. Saint Peter is the patron of the Church in Rome and Saint Andrew is the patron of the Church in Constantinople. In Jerusalem, in the Mother Church, they embrace. The two apostles are in a boat that represents the Church, whose mast is the Cross of the Lord. The sails of the boat are full of wind, the Holy Spirit, which directs the boat as it sails across the waters of this world." (from Vatican News)





I don't like the logo. It reminds me of this photo. The Peter in the logo looks so much like Jesus in the icon.




It's probably the way they embraced, too, in the logo looks so much as the embrace of Judas.