My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Continuing the tradition founded by Pope Paul VI and followed by John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI has issued a World Day of Peace message for the first day of the year, which, for Catholics, is the Feast of the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God.  He concludes his message by praying for the intercession of Mary,  “The Queen of Peace, the Mother of Jesus Christ, our peace”  (Eph 2:14).

As we begin this year, we particularly pay for peace in an embattled world.  As we look at the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Dafur and Somalia, all make us wonder about the possibility of world peace.  These are only a few of the areas where peace does not seem to be taking hold.  The Holy Fathers for some time have pleaded for world peace and yet the world has not heeded their pleas.

This year’s message is based on the theme, “The Human Person, the Heart of Peace.”  It is truly from the human person that peace can come. The human person is a gift. The gift comes from God, who gives life to this gift. The human person has a task: to love, to make progress in the world and to renew justice and peace.  This responsibility is exactly what peace entails.  Peace, first of all, is a gift from God, but also it is a task that must be accomplished by man according to what is known as its “grammar,” or the rules for individual actions and reciprocal relationships.  Peace truly is integral to the nature of man, yet it seems to be so elusive.

Basic to peace is the right to life as well as the right to religious freedom.  These rights flow from the innate dignity of the human person.  Without life, all other rights are dim; without religious freedom, the highest dignity of life cannot be respected.  The Holy Father quotes an interesting line in this regard from Mahatma Gandhi, who said wisely:  “The Ganges of rights flows from the Himalaya of duties.”  The Ganges is the sacred river of India, flowing from the highest mountains, the Himalayas.  Rights are based on duties; neither can be separated from the other.  The duty of man is to seek peace, which allows him to support the right to life and religious freedom.  Recognizing the equality of persons and of a certain ecology in the world is also basic to human peace and progress.

In his message, the Holy Father repeated an important statement about religion and peace, something that he attempted to convey in his recent talk in Germany.  He said:  “Equally unacceptable are conceptions of God that would encourage intolerance and recourse to violence against others.  This is a point which must be clearly reaffirmed:  war in God’s name is never acceptable!” 

Yet, we see in our world today wars waged in the name of religion.  Many claim that religion is the cause of war.  It is rather its perversion that has caused many conflicts and has become a convenient excuse for humans to disregard the rights of others.  It is certainly tragic whenever religion is hijacked and used as an excuse for violence and the destruction of human life.

The current situation in Lebanon---mentioned by the Holy Father in his message---is truly a tragic one.  There, a society once able to live in peace among various religious groups now finds itself at the brink of destruction because some have pitted one group against another.  How true this is of Iraq, where the major division between two Islamic groups, the Sunnis and the Shiites, has been cited as the cause of conflict.  I would venture to say again that these are excuses used by some to create division.  Divisions do not exist when basic human rights and the freedom of religion are respected.  However, when these are forgotten, we see the tragic events of war in our world.

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told reporters at a news conference recently that:  “The global fight against terrorism can be seen as the Fourth World War.  The Cold War was the third.”  In the last century, we saw the results of the First and Second World Wars, as well as the Cold War.  At the beginning of the new century, it is the war on terrorism that plagues us.  When will this war end? It certainly seems that it might be more protracted than any of the previous wars. It cuts to the heart of the human condition, the inability to accept differences and the tendency to be intolerant of others.

The World Day of Peace gives us a unique opportunity to reflect on ourselves as peacemakers.  The Church and its members, Pope Benedict reminds us, must be the guardians of the dignity of the human person. Dignity cannot be respected unless there is peace. 

Making peace is certainly an exercise in putting out into the deep.  We are never sure that efforts at peacemaking---between people, in families, between groups and among nations---will be accepted.  Peace is an adventure into the unknown. 

Join me in praying on this World Day of Peace that the pleas of our Holy Father will be accepted in our world and that the conflict in Iraq, which was opposed by John Paul II, may come to a reasonable end. A graceful exit must be one that leaves the country in a better condition than in which it was found.                      

                                          

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