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)