Pope Benedict XVI’s 46th message for the World Day of Peace, celebrated throughout the Roman Catholic world on 1 January, has as its title one of Jesus’ beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers”.
To be a peacemaker means to enter into a deep personal relationship with the Father, the God of mercy, and pray to Him for the precious and much-needed gift of peace. In the Holy Father’s words, we who believe are to “implore the redemption achieved for us by his only-begotten Son”.
But what does this redemption entail from us? The Pope was as sharp as ever, specifically so on this pivotal point. “The attainment of peace depends above all on recognising that we are, in God, one human family”. In short, to have peace means embracing a way of life that highly promotes the common dignity, earned for us by Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, that we are children of God. This dignity is so sublime that any kind of selfishness, violence, greed, the will to power and dominion, hatred, unjust structures and intolerance should literally cease in its presence!
Moreover, the Pope comments that “our times, marked by globalisation with its positive and negative aspects, as well as the continuation of violent conflicts and threats of war, demand a new, shared commitment in pursuit of the common good and the development of all men, and of the whole man”. In his enriching text the Holy Father gives some practical examples to explain what he intends by this “new shared commitment” for peace.
The first item is “respect for human life in all its many aspects, beginning with its conception, through its development and up to its natural end”. Thus, authentic peacemakers are the ones who “love, defend and promote human life in all its dimensions, personal, communitarian and transcendent”.
The second example is to “acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union; such attempts actually harm and help to destabilise marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society”.
Thirdly, peace is also achieved when legal systems and the administration of justice truly acknowledge “the right to invoke the principle of conscientious objection in the face of laws or government measures that offend against human dignity, such as abortion and euthanasia”.
The fourth example is recognising “the right of individuals and communities to religious freedom”. This right must be promoted not merely as freedom from obligations or limitations concerning the freedom of selecting one’s faith but also as freedom for such as testifying to one’s faith, propagating its teaching, participating in activities in the educational and charitable sectors which allow the practice of religious tenets, as well as existing and acting as social bodies structured according to the appropriate doctrinal beliefs and institutional purposes of each.
In the face of economic growth that is being pursued “to the detriment of the state’s social responsibilities and civil society’s networks of solidarity, together with social rights and duties”, Pope Benedict XVI rightly affirms that “human dignity and economic, social and political factors demand that we continue to prioritise the goal of access to steady employment for everyone”. A refreshing understanding of work is needed in order for the latter to flourish.
Such an outlook, the Holy Father explains, must be “based on ethical principles and spiritual values that reinforce the notion of work as a fundamental good for the individual, for the family and for society.
“Corresponding to this good are a duty and a right that demand courageous new policies of universal employment”.
The last example is that of presenting a new model and approach to development and the economy. People, groups and institutions that foster life are likewise to promote human creativity. Thus, peacemakers in this area are called to “establish bonds of fairness and reciprocity with their colleagues, workers, clients and consumers”. Their economic activity is geared for the benefit of current and future generations.
Let us participate in this shared new commitment and become real peacemakers!
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
SAN GWANN