UNIVERSAL
PEACE FEDERATION - Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace
(Kenya)
Nairobi City County Ambassadors for Peace
CELEBRATION OF EID-UL-FITR – 2015
Dear Brothers and Sisters
Good afternoon!
I heartily address my greetings to all of you and in a special way to the ambassadors for peace who have invited me to share this moment of fraternity in honour of Eid-Ul-Fitr festivities at the end of Ramadan.
We Christians appreciate, promote and support these invitations as interesting opportunities to understand others and to rediscover the relevance of dialogue for building a united society. We believe that the dialogue is a privileged space to compare different identities united by a single goal: search for what unifies and not for what divides.
Don Bosco Mission has a charism open to wide horizons, clear in its identity and open to dialogue. Our mission is meant to form, through education, the person in all his/her integrity in respect for different traditions, cultures and religious belonging.
The presence of the representatives of different faiths coming to share together in peace and harmony is a meaningful presence which can promote the development of society.
The meaningful presence for us Christians is to be alive to the other person in a dialogical relationship. It means that our being, itself is a being towards others, and should make a difference in their lives.
Presence is also called an invitation to love. A truly loving presence precludes both superiority and inferiority complexes, but implies a sense of brotherhood. In this way, we are called authentic children of God because we are signs and bearers of his love. We can build together a civilization where justice, equality, peace, human rights and the dignity of the individual are respected and promoted. We can then live the fraternity that Pope Francis calls the foundation and pathway of peace. In his message for the world day of Peace he said: “Fraternity is an essential human quality, for we are relational beings. A lively awareness of our relatedness helps us to look upon, and to treat each person as a true sister or brother; without fraternity it is impossible to build a just society and a solid and lasting peace. We should remember that fraternity is generally first learned in the family, thanks above all to the responsible and complementary roles of each of its members, particularly the father and the mother. The family is the wellspring of all fraternity, and as such it is the foundation and the first pathway to peace, since, by its vocation, it is meant to spread its love to the world around it.” (Cf. World message of peace 2014)
Dear brothers and sisters, thank you for creating this moment of togetherness in order to build the relationship between different faiths and to promote the inter-religious dialogue which is the strategy for the universal peace needed in our societies. Let us pray for one another to remain faithful witnesses to God’s radical love towards humanity.
Thank you so much and be blessed!
Sr. Gisèle Ndekezi, Salesian sister of Don Bosco
