1. We are at the eve of Pentecost, the feast of the Spirit, who continually invades and transforms hearts, gathers the Church and renews the community. It is the hour to listen to the Word of God, to pray intensely to the Holy Spirit:
   
   "Come, Holy Spirit, in our hearts
   and send from heaven on high
   a ray of your light...
   
   Break that which is unyielding,
   Reheat that which is cold
   Make right that which is wrong."
2. Our people are dying; our country is on the brink of ruin. Our nation is threatened with destruction by an armed intervention from abroad. We want to express our profound sorrow and rejection of all that may bloody our land. We wish also to sound a cry of alarm at the real danger of our losing our sovereignty.
   
   
3. There has been recourse to all sorts of measures, but in spite of all, we have not found a way to pull Haiti out of this impasse. Can we remain passive in the face of this slow agony?
   
   
4. For more than forty-five years, Israelis and Palestinians had tried all the resources of diplomacy and politics, yet these efforts produced nothing. For more than a century, blacks and whites lived as brother enemies on the same land in South Africa. Negotiations conducted in an atmosphere of violence, repression, or hatred produced no result. Only by the different groups of the country coming together, only by dialogue between them, was the path to unity and peace able to be opened.
   
   
5. Aren't these lessons of history a "sign of the times" for us that we must scrutinize and interpret in the light of the Gospel?
   
   
6. To enable Haiti to recover her stability and her energy, isn't it necessary to go beyond self, to a deeper caring, to an infusion of evangelical love in order to advance the well-being of the Haitian people? The time has come to give up self-interest in order to turn towards the other.
   
   
7. What is needed? It is essential to promote the Common Good of all the people. It is necessary to help this people who have suffered much and who would like a chance to go beyond that misery. It is necessary to enable this people who have so many human and spiritual resources to use them to save this country.
   
   
8. Why is such a project so difficult to achieve? Isn't it because individual interests and personal or group advantages are substituted for the common good? Isn't it because the will to protect international interests paralyzes the pursuit of national interests?
   
   
9. We invite the protagonists of this crisis to come together and, in frank and courageous dialogue, to reflect together, to accept one another, and to make such an effort as was made by the Israeli, Palestinian, and South African leaders, black and white, in order to save this country from disaster, destruction and death.
   
   
10. It is the future of the nation of Haiti that is at risk: the future of our families, our children and our youth. It is the future of this land passed on by our ancestors to be fruitful, to be profitable and to be developed. The survival of Haiti and her people depends on this. Faced by this challenge, are we able to hesitate to come together? Are we able to refuse to take the one step that can save our people? The gesture that is inspired by forgetting self, the act of love for this people, extended even to gift of oneself. The Lord asks it today. Can we refuse to answer his plea?
    
    
11. People of God, people of good will, let us turn towards God our Father, Who sends us the Spirit of light and power to affirm our hope, support our prayers and renew the face of our land, Haiti.

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