“Fraternity: the Foundation and Pathway to Peace”
Homily Notes of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin
Saint Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, 1st January 2014
“Peace is a theme and a thought
which comes naturally to all of us as a New Year begins. It comes
naturally to all, no matter who we are and what our ethnic or religious
background is.
We all wish that the New Year which begins will bring
peace to each one of us: to us in our own hearts, to our families and
children and communities, to our nation and to our world.
Yet, year after year, we are
called to look back at a year which was anything but peaceful. We have
become almost immune to the figures and statistics of war.
Over the
past twelve months we have been hearing day after day – alone regarding
the conflict in Syria - the terms “millions” and “hundreds of
thousands”, as we speak of people displaced from their homes or forced
to flee their nation.
The list of conflicts is long and sadly many
conflicts with their own “hundreds of thousands” of victims – especially
in Africa – barely even make the radar-screens of our news headlines.
No one is spared. The children
of wars are among the largest group of victims who have appeared on our
television reviews of the year 2013. These children would wish to dream
of peace, but most likely they pass their nights with nightmares of
what they have experienced and of what they fear.
We make our appeals to “the
international community” – but unfortunately there are many kinds of
international community: there is the international community of good
intentions, but it has sparse results. There is the international
community of organised crime. There is the international community of
shady, shadowy and corrupt arms dealers.
But there are also those who,
like us, gather wherever they are this morning, and raise their voices
to say: “enough”. There are those who are prepared to risk their own
lives to prevent conflict and maintain a fragile peace. This morning we
remember in our prayers all the members of our Defence Forces who
continue to witness to the extraordinary tradition of this country in
peace-keeping.
There are members of An Garda Síochána, there are
development workers, there are missionaries and religious, there are our
diplomatic representatives and many others who work quietly to leave a
distinctive Irish imprint on working for peace. We express our
appreciation to all of them and we remember all of them in our prayers
as well as their families at home.
Peace is too important to be left
just to the professionals. It is communities that make or break peace.
We need to develop at all levels, beginning in our own hearts, a deep
culture of fostering peace and reconciliation and coming together in the
realization that we need each other and that difference must not be a
source of hatred and division, suspicion and fear, but something which
enriches, something indeed which belongs to being a human person. When
God created humankind he created us as a family.
That is why Pope Francis chose for this year’s World Day of Peace
the theme: “Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace”. In his
Message for today, the Pope begins with the biblical narrative of the
origins of society and the evolution of relations between individuals
and people. The biblical image stresses our common origin in terms of a
family: we come from common parents.
But already in this first family
– from the very origins of humankind - we also encounter a rejection of
what our common origins entail. Cain and Abel are called to be
brothers, to represent fraternity, but the egoism of Cain amounts to a
rejection of the common vocation of all human beings not just to be
brothers and sisters, but to live as brothers and sisters.
Pope Francis stresses how the
story of Cain and Abel reminds us both of our inherent call to be
brothers and sisters and at the same time of our tragic capacity to
reject the bonds of reciprocity and fellowship, of communion and self
giving.
That fundamental tension remains
at the root of many of the divisions in our world and in our society.
Globalization could be a process of ensuring that the marginalised
become protagonists of an economy which serves human development, a
challenge to a protectionism which divides humankind and tends to
privilege and prioritize ourselves to the detriment of the talents and
the hopes of others. Globalization can easily just become the extension
of personal egoism and the maintenance of privilege.
A different model of
globalization is possible if we recognise, as Pope Francis writes, that:
“human beings need and are capable of something greater than maximising
their individual interest”. The aim of modern society must rather be:
“to permit everyone to recognise in the other a brother or a sister to
care for and to work together with in building fulfilling life for all”.
Fraternity, like charity, begins
at home. Not in the sense of looking after ourselves first, but in the
attitudes of our hearts. Fraternity and the ensuing peace it generates
start in the climate we create around ourselves and in our society.
Pope Francis likes to surprise. He certainly surprised the Bishops and
Cardinals of the Roman Curia when he received them just before Christmas
and reprimanded them with a word which we might all take to heart.
He
spoke of: “conscientious objection to gossip!”
“We rightfully insist
on the importance of conscientious objection”, the Pope said, “but
perhaps we too need to exercise it as a means of defending ourselves
from an unwritten law of our surroundings, which unfortunately is that
of gossip. For gossip is harmful to people, harmful to our work and
our surroundings”.
A peaceful climate in our homes
and in our society will only be created when we realise how much our
insensitivity can hurt and harm others. Pope Francis has indeed won
respect by his ability to show respect towards those with whom he may
not agree. Fraternity obliges us to act in the same way. Cynicism and
insinuation are not the paths to a peaceful and harmonious society.
Jesus came among us to show us
the pathway of love. In him the goodness and loving kindness of God took
human flesh. In his birth he restores true fraternity, in that in him
we share in his own sonship of the Father. In our common sonship of
God, Pope Francis stresses that: “all men and women enjoy an equal and
inviolable dignity. All are beloved by God”.
The Pope stresses that
therefore - for the true believer - there are no “disposable lives” and
therefore no one can remain indifferent to the lot of our brothers and
sisters.
In God’s family there can be no second-class brothers and
sisters, yet we categorize without noticing into second-class and
third-class and indeed even beyond.
The shepherds, we heard in our
Gospel reading, came and found Jesus in the manger, with Joseph and
Mary. They went about telling of their experience and “all were
astonished by what they had to say”. All “marvelled” – another
translation says - at the story they told.
We too are called to marvel at
God’s actions, not to become closed and cynical and indifferent and
unyielding. Peace needs men and women who can marvel at the
possibilities of goodness and hope.
When it comes to working for peace
there are those whose calling it is to try to knit together the fragile
threads that might still unite estranged peoples. And there are those
who lead by marvelling, by rising above estrangement and seeing – even
in those with whom they disagree - the real bonds of humanity that unite
us. We need both strands.
By my own nature and training, I tend to
stress what can be attained by diplomacy and negotiation, but we all
know that no amount of diplomacy and negotiation will work if there are
not those who lead towards peace by recalling the higher things and by
rising above self-centeredness or cynicism and courageously building the
bridges of that fraternity which is the foundation and pathway to
peace.