On January 1, Pope Francis delivered several messages of peace and patience on the first day of the New Year. The pontiff used the regularly-scheduled Angelus prayer to make calls for patience with others and with God; speaking of Jesus, the pope said, “His salvation is not a magical but rather a ‘patient’ salvation, that is, it requires the patience of love, which takes on inequity and removes its power…. Love makes us patient.” Pope Francis also took the opportunity to comment on the events of the New Year’s Eve reception the night before, where he “swatted away” the hand of a woman from the crowd who clung to him: “Often we lose our patience; I too, and please excuse me for yesterday’s bad example.”
The more substantial of the pontiff’s messages in the Angelus, however, was peace. Pope St. Paul VI dedicated the first day of the year as the World Day of Peace, in order to encourage prayer and reflection on this most blessed state of affairs. Pope Francis explained that “peace is a journey of hope, a journey which moves forward through dialogue, reconciliation and ecological conversion.” The pope finished this reflection by stating that “[i]n this way the year that is beginning will be a journey of hope and of peace, not with words, but through daily gestures of dialogue, reconciliation and care for creation.” Pope Francis also addressed the World Day of Peace during its celebration, commenting on the current global political climate; he urged humanity to overcome disagreements and recognize that “our world is paradoxically marked by ‘a perverse dichotomy that tries to defend and ensure stability and peace through a false sense of security sustained by a mentality of fear and mistrust…Peace and international stability are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction or the threat of total annihilation. They can be achieved only on the basis of a global ethic of solidarity” The pontiff recognized that protecting God’s creation is a vital issue to world and cooperation by stating that “[S]ocial and economic decisions are being made that lead to tragic situations where human beings and creation itself are discarded rather than protected and preserved. How, then, do we undertake a journey of peace and mutual respect?”
The pope also stressed the importance of understanding history in order to apply it to the present; he cited the Hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as being a prominent example among those that “keep alive the flame of collective conscience.” He said, “we cannot allow present and future generations to lose the memory of what happened here. It is a memory that ensures and encourages the building of a more fair and fraternal future.” Pope Francis concluded his explanation by tying peace and patience together with democracy: “The peace process thus requires enduring commitment. It is a patient effort to seek truth and justice… to open the way, step by step, to a shared hope stronger than the desire for vengeance. In a state based on law, democracy can be an important paradigm of this process, provided it is grounded in justice and a commitment to protect the rights of every person, especially the weak and marginalized, in a constant search for truth.”
During his homily on January 1, the pontiff also addressed violence on women: “Women are sources of life. Yet they are continually insulted, beaten, raped, forced to prostitute themselves and to suppress the life they bear in the womb.” He declared that it is a “blasphemy against God” to inflict violence upon a woman, especially considering that Jesus, humanity’s salvation, was born of a woman. The lessons that Mary, and women in general, can teach humanity are also profound: “Women show us that the meaning of life is not found in making things but in taking things to heart. Only those who see with the heart see things properly, because they know how to “look into” each person: to see a brother apart from his mistakes, a sister apart from her failings, hope amid difficulty. They see God in all persons and things.”
Pope Francis ended by bringing all of the day’s themes together and calling for proper treatment of women around the world in order to create peace: “So let us ask for the grace to live this year with the desire to take others to heart and to care for them.”
Featured image courtesy of Piqsels
Grant is a senior studying Information Systems at the Carroll School of Management. He keeps busy by studying and writing for The Torch.
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