Memory of the prayer for the new martyrs presided over by John Paul II at the Coliseum in Rome with the representatives of Christian churches during the Great Jubilee of the year 2000.

Reading of the Word of God

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.
The child you shall bear will be holy.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

John 16,5-11

but now I am going to the one who sent me. Not one of you asks, 'Where are you going?' Yet you are sad at heart because I have told you this. Still, I am telling you the truth: it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will show the world how wrong it was, about sin, and about who was in the right, and about judgement: about sin: in that they refuse to believe in me; about who was in the right: in that I am going to the Father and you will see me no more; about judgement: in that the prince of this world is already condemned.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Look down, O Lord, on your servants.
Be it unto us according to your word.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

For Jesus it is time to inaugurate the time of faith. We must not think that this time is poorer than that of the apostles. The Holy Spirit poured into the hearts of the disciples decides the time of the Church. It is the Spirit that sustains the disciples, consoles them, comforts them, guards them, enlightens them and enables them to communicate the Gospel of love to transform the world. The Spirit will help the disciples in the difficult times they will face. The Spirit will "prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement." The evangelist imagines it as a great assembly where the evil at work in the world is revealed, unmasked, in order to destroy it. It is the task that the disciples must live by letting themselves be led by the Spirit. One needs to consume one's eyes in scrutinising the world and history in the light of the Scriptures with the help of the Spirit in order to detect the evil at work in the world and defeat it, and to undertake the ways of love that save the world. This is the grave and fascinating task that Christians still have today: to be prophets who unmask evil and who first and foremost show the way to goodness by their example. One of them, Archbishop Oscar Romero, still speaks today. He read the dramatic history of his time in the light of the Word of God. Certainly, it cost him martyrdom, but his testimony is still as precious as ever today. In the face of the accusations made against him, he replied that all he was doing was reading history in the light of the Gospel: "The word is like the ray of sunshine that comes from above and illuminates. What fault does the sun have when its pure light meets puddles, excrement, rubbish on this earth? It must illuminate these things, otherwise it would not be sun, it would not be light, it would not highlight the ugly, the horrible that exists on earth."