Many of us feel helpless in the face of the escalating war in the Middle East. Thousands have been killed, many thousands more injured, and more than four million people displaced—one of the fastest-growing displacements in years. Oil prices have risen to US$100 per barrel due to supply shortages resulting in higher-than-usual inflation and leading to even greater suffering among our poorest sisters and brothers. What can we do? What can our leaders and governments do to end the war? How can we walk with those suffering around us?
Austen Ivereigh, in his book First Belong to God: On Retreat with Pope Francis, describes Pope Francis’s 2022 book, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future as “packed with Francis’s wisdom on how humanity could emerge from the pandemic, born of insights into the way God’s grace operates in times of tribulation”. Pope Francis views the pandemic as a lens for other crises humanity faces—climate emergency, accelerating inequality and insecurity, huge population displacements, and the rise of authoritarian populism. These crises may not have a single cause, but it is clear that new techno-economic policies fall short of the challenge. “Nothing less than a conversion in our new way of seeing and way of being is called for.”
Austen notes that for Pope Francis, what is lacking is a sense of belonging, “[that] blessed awareness that we are part of one another, that we are brothers and sisters of one another” (Fratelli Tutti, 32). He argues that we can grow through these crises by recovering our threefold belonging: to God, to creation, and to one another. Only then can we manage the transition to a better future.
“Nothing less than a conversion in our new way of seeing and way of being is called for.”
As the experience of the pandemic showed, people discovered new ways of belonging, of being in solidarity with one another, the created world, and our own interior lives. There is a Filipino term, bayanihan, which refers to a spirit of communal unity, cooperation, and mutual help, especially in times of need. During the pandemic, we witnessed this solidarity: wealthy people donated masks, PPEs, and medicines; people from all walks of life set up food pantries and volunteered for deliveries; medical and service personnel risked—and many even gave—their lives for Covid patients.
In this time of Easter, may the Risen Lord grant to all of us the grace of conversion to recognise that we are all sisters and brothers responsible for each other! May Easter time move us to continue walking with and learning from the poor who are most impacted by the evils of this war.
+AMDG+
Easter 2026
