Message de l'Archevêque Rowan Williams

VIIe Colloque liturgique international 
ÉGLISE ET VILLE
Bose, 4 - 6 juin 2009
Monastère de Bose
Office national pour les biens culturels ecclésiastiques – CEI

MESSAGE DE ROWAN WILIAMS, ARCHEVEQUE DE CANTERBURY AU VIIe COLLOQUE LITURGIQUE DE BOSE

I am delighted to be able to send my greetings for the colloquium at Bose on Church and City. Our culture is currently ingreat confusion about what we hope for and what we trust in, especiaHy in regard to how we organise our common life on a foundation of equity and respect.

Yet the Christian faith has always presented itself as a vision for 'civìc' life in the broadest sense, as a form of citizenship, politeia. Our spaces for worship are places where the image of a new society is brought to Iight, in the Eucharist and in the other acts of the people of God gathered for confession, thanksgiving and adoration. In so many of our European cities today, our great cathedrals and other churches have become deeply attractive to many because they speak of the possibility of inhabiting a larger, more generous and more patient atmosphere than most people are used to; and in the deprivation and hopelessness of so many urban landscapes, the Church of God is the most effective witness to liberation and the enlargement of human experience, the most effective agency in stirring communities towards change.

With all this in mind, the present colloquium could hardly be more timely. I wish you every blessing in your work and prayer together. May this meeting help to give new vitality to our hope that we may see, through our worship and witness within the testing circumstances of our society, signs of the City of God, the New jerusalem, descending from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband.

+ Rowan Cantuar
Archevêque de Canterbury