Peacemakers in a New Year

New possibilities unfold with a new year. Beginning with the first month, it’s as if we could hear January say, “Let’s begin anew.” Or as Venerable Bruno Lanteri, who founded the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, advised, Nunc Coepi — now I begin. Ahora empiezo nuevamente.

So as we begin a New Year, Pope Francis urges us to be peacemakers. In his message for World Day of Peace, observed each year on Jan. 1, the Holy Father focuses on “Peace as a journey of hope: dialogue, reconciliation, and ecological conversion.”

His five points are ones we can apply close to home in our families, work and communities.

1.         Peace, a journey of hope in the face of obstacles and trial.

2.         Peace, a journey of listening based on memory, solidarity and fraternity.

3.         Peace, a journey of reconciliation in fraternal communion.

4.         Peace, a journey of ecological conversion; and

5.         We obtain all that we hope for”

Pope Francis in his fifth point notes, “Peace will not be obtained unless it is hoped for.” We have to want peace in our lives in order to work for it.

“The desire for peace lies deep within the human heart,” he said, “and we should not resign ourselves to seeking anything less than this.”

He adds, “The world does not need empty words but convinced witnesses, peacemakers who are open to a dialogue that rejects exclusion or manipulation. … Peace ‘must be built up continually;’ it is a journey made together in constant pursuit of the common good, truthfulness and respect for law. Listening to one another can lead to mutual understanding and esteem, and even to seeing in an enemy the face of a brother or sister.”

He said it is an enduring commitment, “an ongoing work in which each individual makes his or her contribution responsibly, at every level of the local, national and global community.”

W each have a small garden to tend

While there is much happening around the world that is out of our control, we can focus on what is within our reach, close to home. Father Tad Pacholczyk, in his column on “Pushing back against evil,” said, “We need to recognize how God has entrusted to each of us a small garden that he asks us to tend. If we tend that plot well, he will extend the reach of his grace in ways we cannot foresee or imagine, and we will actually contribute to stemming the tide of error and evil well beyond the limited confines of our particular plot.

“This implies that each of us has different responsibilities, depending upon our particular state in life, our commitments, and our employment and family situations. By attending carefully to those responsibilities and conscientiously tending our gardens, the air around us can indeed begin to change.”

Thus, we can each be agents of change, peacemakers. As the Holy Father tells us, “Day by day, the Holy Spirit prompts in us ways of thinking and speaking that can make us artisans of justice and peace.”

Let’s remember, we walk together on the journey of peace building. As Bishop Daniel E. Flores reminds us often, “Si no caminamos juntos, no vamos a llegar.” (If we do not walk together, we are not going to get to where we are going.)

Being peacemakers close to home

Easier said than done, you might say. How can we practice this close to home?

As we consider the Holy Father’s words, it’s about listening, about working collaboratively, about forgiveness. Some forces in the world try to bully us into creating divisions and breeding competition. As the Holy Father has said in previous talks on unity, “divisions wound Christ’s body (and) they impair the witness which we are called to give him before the world.”

But when we recognize God’s abundance and his saving grace, we learn to celebrate each other and encourage each other on the journey. Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about creating win-win situations. When we shift our paradigms away from individualism and competition, we can create environments in which we support one another, neighbor helping neighbor, as God calls us to do.

God guides us at every step. He fortifies us through the sacraments. He invites us to keep him at the center of everything.

As we greet each day and month this year, we can also think of ways of finding peace within ourselves. Recently I visited the Poor Clare Sisters at their monastery in Alamo. As we paused in the prayer garden, Sister Martha invited us to “listen to the sound of peace.” You could also hear peace inside the Adoration Chapel before the Eucharist. The visit with the sisters in the chapel was a strong reminder that making time to spend with God is essential, especially if we are to fulfill our role as peacemakers.

(Originally published in January 2020 edition of The Valley Catholic newspaper)