THE CRY OF MEN AND WOMEN today seeking meaning for their lives reaches all Churches of the East and of the West.  In this cry, we perceive the invocation of those who seek the Father whom they have forgotten and lost.  The women and men of today are asking us to show them Christ, who knows the Father and who has revealed him.  Letting the world ask us its questions, listening with humility and tenderness, in full solidarity with those who express them, we are called to show in word and deed today the immense riches that our Churches preserve in the coffers of their traditions.  We learn from the Lord himself, who would stop along the way to be with the people, who listened to them and was moved to pity when he saw them "like sheep without a shepherd."

From him we must learn the loving gaze with which he reconciled men to the Father and with themselves, communicating to them that power which alone is able to heal the whole person.

--Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter Orient Lumen