Homily for New Year's Day and World Day of Prayer for Peace

Homily for New Year’s Day
& World Day of Prayer for PeaceJan. 1, 2010
Num 6: 22-27
Christian Bros., St. Joseph’s Home, N.R.
Ursulines, Willow Drive, N.R.

“The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace” (Num 6: 26).

Jan. 1 remains a solemnity in the church calendar in search of a proper identity—a feast with an identity crisis, if you like. It’s the Octave Day of Christmas, the commemoration of the circumcision and naming of Jesus, the beginning of the civil year, a solemn feast honoring Mary as Mother of God—certainly fitting as part of our Christmas celebration; and since the time of Paul VI, a day of prayers for peace. It’s impossible to give due attention to more than one or two of those themes, and despite an annual peace message from Paul, John Paul, and Benedict, the theme of peace probably gets the least attention of any of the themes except circumcision.

When you start to enumerate the places where there’s armed conflict, that’s a little strange. There are full-blown wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we’re all fully aware, and in Congo, Pakistan, and Colombia, while one such war ended only a few months ago in Sri Lanka. There are low-grade wars or civil conflicts—“low grade” to us who are scarcely aware of them—in Chechnya, the Holy Land (I guess we’re all aware of that one), India, Kashmir, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Peru, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and probably a half dozen other places that didn’t come to my mind as I was writing this. Not tens of thousands, not even hundreds of thousands, of people have died in these wars, but millions of people, without counting street protests and their suppression (such as what’s happening in Iran at this time), or fighting that seems to be done with (the Balkans, Georgia vs. Russia).

Surely, constant prayers for peace are warranted, and attention to the causes of conflict and attempts to resolve them.

In his message for World Peace Day this year, Pope Benedict links his long-standing concern for the environment to the future peace of mankind. (You may recall that he also addressed the environment in terms of social justice in his encyclical last summer.) In the words of the editorial in the current issue of Catholic New York, the Holy Father calls “the deterioration of the planet a pressing moral issue that threatens peace and human life itself.”*

Novelists have been inspired by that danger for years. E.g., in The Shoes of the Fisherman, I believe the threat of famine was endangering world peace. A very different sort of novel, Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, posited the need for oil as the cause of World War III. These days some people see fresh water as the resource over which nations will fight in the future—on a much more serious scale than in those old Western movies regarding rival ranchers and the one river in the valley.

Ga-Nus-Quah, Harriman State Park

Pope Benedict refers to the frustration that many people experience when natural resources are used inequitably, and when their misuse threatens the existence of many people. “Sad to say, it is all too evident,” he writes, “that large numbers of people in different countries and areas of our planet are experiencing increased hardship because of the negligence or refusal of many others to exercise responsible stewardship over the environment.” For example, if global warming is real, causing sea levels to rise and weather patterns to change drastically, we can foresee the chaos of Hurricane Katrina magnified many times over. Think of Bangladesh’s geography, and imagine what’ll happen when a two- or three-feet rise in sea level forces millions of Bangladeshis to flee across the border to India.

The Pope makes the point that the Earth and its resources are given to humanity in stewardship. We’re not their owners but their guardians. The Creator means them to benefit everyone, including future generations. If we’ve known for a long time that some resources are finite—think fossil fuels—we’re becoming more aware that there’s also a finiteness to water, to clean air, to habitats, to the balance of eco-systems. Benedict writes in his peace message: “It is becoming more and more evident that the issue of environmental degradation challenges us to examine our lifestyle and the prevailing models of consumption and production, which are often unsustainable from a social, environmental, and even economic point of view.” To solve these challenges, he says, people—and surely he means especially people in the First World—will have to adopt more sober lifestyles and become more interested in solidarity with the Third World.
The Holy Father firmly links such sobriety, such solidarity, such protection of the natural environment with world peace. And he calls this protection of the environment an urgent challenge as well as a providential opportunity—an opportunity to do something for others now and for the future. The Lord assuredly looked kindly upon us when he so richly blessed our planet with its resources of flora and fauna, of minerals, air, and water, of breathtaking beauty, and of course of humanity, made in his own image; and just as assuredly, the way to the peace he intends for his creation is to care for all these and share them with all, including future generations. If we can find a way to do that, his way will be known upon the earth, his saving benefits among all nations. The nations of the earth will have opportunity to be glad and exult, to know that he rules in equity (cf. Ps 67:3,5).

* Dec. 17, 2009, p. 11.

A landscape in Tuscany (Rita Mendl)