SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD
WORLD DAY OF PEACE
POPE FRANCIS
We begin this year placing ourselves under the maternal and loving gaze of Mary Most Holy, celebrated in today’s liturgy as Mother of God. Thus we take up once again the journey along the paths of history, entrusting our anxieties and our torments to her who can do everything. Mary watches over us with maternal tenderness just as she watched over her Son Jesus, and if we look at the Nativity Scene, we see that Jesus is not in the crib,and they told me that the Madonna said: “Won’t you let me hold this Son of mine a bit in my arms?” This is what the Madonna does with us: she wants to hold us in her harms to protect us as she protected and loved her Son. The reassuring and comforting gaze of the Holy Virgin is an encouragement to make sure that this time, granted us by the Lord, might be spent for our human and spiritual growth, that it be a time in which hatred and division are resolved, and there are many, that it be a time to experience ourselves as brothers and sisters, a time to build and not to destroy, to take care of each other and of creation. A time to make things grow a time of peace.
It is specifically regarding the care
of our neighbours and of creation that the theme for the World Day of Peace, which we celebrate today, is
dedicated: A Culture of
Care as a Path to Peace. The painful events that marked
humanity’s journey last year, especially the pandemic, taught us how much it is
necessary to take an interest in others’ problems and to share their concerns.
This attitude represents the path that leads to peace, because it fosters the
construction of a society founded on fraternal relationships. Each of us, men
and women of this time, is called to make peace happen, each one of us, we are
not indifferent to this. We are called to make peace happen each day and in
every place we live, taking those brothers and sisters by the hand who need a
comforting word, a tender gesture, solidary help. This is a task given us by
God. The Lord has given us the task of being peacemakers.
And peace can become a reality if we
begin to be in peace with ourselves – at peace inside, in our hearts – and with
ourselves, and with those who are near us, removing the obstacles that prevent
us from taking care of those who find themselves in need and in indigence. It
means developing a mentality and a culture of “care taking” to defeat
indifference, to defeat rejection and rivalry – indifference, rejection,
rivalry which unfortunately prevail. To remove these attitudes. And thus, peace
is not only the absence of war, peace is never sterile: no, peace does not
exist in a quirofano (an operating room). Peace is within
life: it is not only the absence of war, but is a life rich in meaning, rooted
in and lived through personal realization and fraternal sharing with others.
Then that peace, so longed for and always endangered by violence, by egoism and
evil, that peace that is endangered might become possible and achievable if I
take it as a task given to me by God.
May the Virgin Mary, who gave birth
to the “Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6), and who cuddles him thus, with
such tenderness in her arms, obtain for us from heaven the precious gift of
peace, which cannot be fully pursued with human force alone. Human force is not
enough because peace is above all a gift, a gift to be implored from God with
incessant prayer, sustained with patient and respectful dialogue, constructed
with an open collaboration with truth and justice and always attentive to the
legitimate aspirations of individuals and peoples. My hope is that peace might
reign in the hearts of men and women and in families, in recreational and work
places, in communities and in nations. In families, at work, in nations: peace,
peace. Now is time to think that life today is organized around war, and
enmities, by many things that destroy. We want peace. And this is a gift.
On the threshold of this beginning, I
extend to everyone my heart-felt greetings for a happy and serene 2021. May
each one of us make sure that it be for everyone a year of fraternal solidarity
and peace, a year filled with expectant trust and hope, which we entrust to the
heavenly protection of Mary, Mother of God and our Mother.
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