2d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Jan. 19, 2020
CollectChristians Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle
“Almighty ever-living God, … mercifully …
bestow your peace on our times” (Collect).
Our country has been at war in Afghanistan
since 2001, in Iraq since 2002. A short
time ago, we seemed about to go to war with Iran. Some might say that Iran has already been at
war with us for 40 years. But presently
people have been praying for peace.
As we look around the globe, we see
numerous places that need peace, in some of which America has been involved; but
many of these numerous places hardly register in Western media. Ongoing civil war in the eastern parts of the
Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, has taken millions of lives.
Insurgencies go on and on in the Philippines, Colombia, Burma, and
Yemen, to list just a few places. We’re
all aware of drug wars in Mexico, gang violence in certain countries in Central
America, and the murderous battles over land, logging, and mining in the Amazon
region. Muslim terrorists are in action
from the western Sahara to Afghanistan in the east. India sees repeated violence between Hindus
and other religious groups. Russia makes
war on Ukraine and harasses other parts of its former empire. In our own cities, people, especially young
people, are gunned down in horrific numbers day after day, month after month.
 |
Part of an exhibit at the Murambi memorial
to the Rwandan genocide
|
James also proposes the remedy: “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from
you. Draw near to God, and he will draw
near to you” (4:7-8).
So in our prayer today we beg the Lord to
bestow peace upon us. In fact, we make a
similar prayer at every Mass as we prepare for holy Communion: “Deliver us, Lord, we pray from every evil,
graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be
always free from sin and safe from all distress….”
In this prayer, as in the Letter of St.
James, we make the connection between peace and the ways of the Lord, the help
of the Lord. Peace in our hearts is
related to our being free from sin, being at peace with God, living in his
grace. Peace in society is the fruit of
the same relationship—whether we mean peace in our homes and families, peace in
our streets, peace in our public discourse and policy-making, peace between
nations, races, tribes, ethnic groups, social classes, or religions. “Peace in our times” follows only from our
being at peace with our Father in heaven, from doing his will and not our own.
A commentator on the sacred liturgy noted
in an address last summer “that everyone worships something.” All persons are made for worship. We want to worship something or someone, and
need to do so. He continues, “But we can and do
worship the wrong things,” e.g., power, money, sex, fame, pleasure, beauty, eternal
youth, “and worshipping the wrong things can be deadly.”[1] Worshipping the wrong things is idolatry; we
become selfish, egotistical, and competitive.
Politics becomes a zero-sum competition rather than public service. We harbor grudges because our pride’s been
hurt. Men and women use each other
without respect for their God-given dignity and eternal value. War, violence, and abuse and arise “from your
passions that make war within your members,” St. James says.
In our hearts we find no lasting satisfaction
in that, nothing that lasts, nothing truly worthy of worship. The same commentator then reminds us of St.
Augustine’s most famous teaching, his conclusion after his years of ambition,
pursuing a career and sexual pleasure; he addresses our Creator: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and
our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
 |
Blessing of the Wheat in Artois
(Jules Breton)
|
In the Lord do we find the peace he wishes
to bestow upon us. Peace begins within
us, with our commitment to him. Thence
it spreads outward as we try to share God’s goodness with our families, our
religious community, and others. We pray
for divine peace in international relations, in Washington, in societies broken
by greed and ambition, in the souls of people everywhere. For this were we created; like life itself,
it’s a gift from our Creator. “Draw near
to God, and he will draw near to you.”
No comments:
Post a Comment