“Our world has become loud in aggression. Harsh tones abound. “Might” seems to be always right. There is ever-decreasing room for the more considered conciliatory voice.” – Bishop Michael
The August roman sunshine was hard to avoid. It was hot, very hot as we left our lodgings to take a packed underground train to the end of the line and then to walk fourteen kilometres or so to get to the field on the outskirts of the city. Our group of eighty young people from the West of Ireland was in good spirits. They were well prepared with backpacks and camping gear.
The sunblock had been generously applied. We were no different than the other groups of young people that from early morning had packed the metro and filled the streets. The difference was the colours on our flag. The energetic crowd sang, they danced, they greeted each other and chatted. Language was not a barrier.
Soon the road ahead was to be full of flags of every conceivable nation on earth. As we reached the flyover that led into the gathering spot, there were over a million on the move. It was of biblical proportions something few might ever think they would see yet be part of in their lives. Once we got to the entrance, we queued in clouds of dry dust to pick up food parcels.
Some spoke of how this was the daily lot of many refugees and displaced people. Food packs in hand we walked to find a base and set up camp for the night.
Dusk was falling as Pope Leo arrived. The vast crowd gathered for the Jubilee of Young People greeted him warmly. Soon we were to pray and pray we did. It is difficult to describe. As exposition of the Blessed Sacrament began the varied crowd fell totally silent.
For a half hour or so, language meant nothing, the world meant nothing, the discomfort of the journey and the prospect of camping outside that night meant nothing. Well over a million young people were spending time with Jesus and that was all that mattered.
On a personal level, I found it profoundly moving. Pope Leo, the successor of St Peter, whose ministry is to gather believers around the Lord, had gathered us from every language, race and culture. I had a great sense that God was real that night reaching down and touching our world. Reaching down and touching the hearts of each of us present saying to us – “look work for good not bad!” “Care for those who need care!” “Stand in the light not in the dark!”
The words of the Gospel we have just heard came forcibly to mind – there is really a “light that shines in darkness”. There is a light that darkness cannot overpower”. (John 1)
Today, we gather as the Catholic Family to bring to a close the Jubilee Year of 2025. We gather to give thanks to God for the opportunities it brought, like the Jubilee of Youth during the summer, to reflect on the hope that Christian faith can bring to our often-darkened lives and our often-broken world. Today we also gather to mark the Fifty-Ninth World Day of Peace.
A day, at the beginning of each year, when we hold up to the world the idea of peace among people and nations – not as some unattainable reality but rather as something, we all have a sacred duty to work towards.
Today, our world knows only too well what war is and the horrendous loss of innocent life and destruction that follows in its wake. We have seen so much that we run the risk of taking it for granted, feeling personally helpless before the enormity of it all. Our world has become loud in aggression.
Harsh tones abound. “Might” seems to be always right. There is ever-decreasing room for the more considered conciliatory voice. International laws that have served us well seem to be easily disregarded.
Against this backdrop, perhaps now more than at most times in the past, the hope filled message of Christianity needs to be taken to heart with greater Vigour. Darkness, no matter how dark, cannot overpower God’s light.
Divinely inspired love and goodness will ultimately triumph. Love can conquer hate. Justice and peace can vanquish war. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves, first of all, - “do we believe this?”
Then we might need to focus on our own lives and let our harsh tones and aggressive ways be enlightened by the true message of the Gospels. Christian faith is always a call to action.
It calls us to continuously hold up to this troubled world of ours our hopeful conviction that “might” is not always right.
Love, justice, peace, equality and a fair share for everyone is the only way to live -the only way that we can live life to the full.
As we leave the Jubilee Year of Hope behind us, our world moves on through the wreckages of wars but let us not lose hope.
I draw strength from that evening in Rome last August. No matter what, let us continue to believe in and work for a better, more peaceful tomorrow for ourselves and our world.
Two-thousand and twenty-five years ago, in the child of Bethlehem God’s light of love came into the darkness of our world.
Today, centuries later, let us reaffirm our faith that in him and his message a light has come into the world - “a light that darkness can never overpower.” (John 1) Amen