Vatican City, 6 June 2015 (VIS) –
Following his address to the authorities of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Pope
Francis travelled by car to the Kosevo stadium, where he was awaited
by more than sixty thousand people to participate in the Holy Mass.
The readings were dedicated to peace and justice, and the ceremony
took place in the Croatian language. In his homily (which he
pronounced in Italian, with translations in Croatian), the Holy
Father emphasised that peace is God's plan for humanity, and again
denounced those who seek confrontation between cultures and
civilizations; citing the prophet Isaiah, he reiterated that if the
work of justice is peace, then that peace is built by hand, day by
day. The following is the full text of his homily.
“The word peace echoes several times
through the Scripture readings which we have just heard. It is a
powerful, prophetic word! Peace is God’s dream, his plan for
humanity, for history, for all creation. And it is a plan which
always meets opposition from men and from the evil one. Even in our
time, the desire for peace and the commitment to build peace collide
with the reality of many armed conflicts presently affecting our
world. They are a kind of third world war being fought piecemeal and,
in the context of global communications, we sense an atmosphere of
war.
“Some wish to incite and foment this
atmosphere deliberately, mainly those who want conflict between
different cultures and societies, and those who speculate on wars for
the purpose of selling arms. But war means children, women and the
elderly in refugee camps; it means forced displacement of peoples; it
means destroyed houses, streets and factories; it means, above all,
countless shattered lives. You know this well, having experienced it
here: how much suffering, how much destruction, how much pain! Today,
dear brothers and sisters, the cry of God’s people goes up once
again from this city, the cry of all men and women of good will: no
more war!
“Within this atmosphere of war, like
a ray of sunshine piercing the clouds, resound the words of Jesus in
the Gospel: 'Blessed are the peacemakers'. This appeal is always
applicable, in every generation. He does not say: 'Blessed are the
preachers of peace', since all are capable of proclaiming peace, even
in a hypocritical, or indeed duplicitous, manner. No. He says:
'Blessed are the peacemakers', that is, those who make peace.
Crafting peace is a skilled work: it requires passion, patience,
experience and tenacity. Blessed are those who sow peace by their
daily actions, their attitudes and acts of kindness, of fraternity,
of dialogue, of mercy... These, indeed, 'shall be called children of
God', for God sows peace, always, everywhere; in the fullness of
time, he sowed in the world his Son, that we might have peace!
Peacemaking is a work to be carried forward each day, step by step,
without ever growing tired.
“So how does one do this, how do we
build peace? The prophet Isaiah reminds us succinctly: 'The effect of
righteousness will be peace'. Opus justitiae pax ('the work of
justice is peace'), from the Vulgate version of Scripture, has become
a famous motto, even adopted prophetically by Pope Pius XII. Peace is
a work of justice. Here too: not a justice proclaimed, imagined,
planned ... but rather a justice put into practice, lived out. The
Gospel teaches us that the ultimate fulfilment of justice is love:
'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'. When, by the grace of
God, we truly follow this commandment, how things change! Because we
ourselves change! Those whom I looked upon as my enemy really have
the same face as I do, the same heart, the same soul. We have the
same Father in heaven. True justice, then, is doing to others what I
would want them to do to me, to my people.
“St. Paul, in the second reading,
shows us the attitude needed to make peace: 'Put on then ...
compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness and patience, forbearing
one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving
each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive'.
These are the attitudes necessary to become artisans of peace
precisely where we live out our daily lives. But we should not fool
ourselves into thinking that this all depends on us! We would fall
into an illusive moralising. Peace is a gift from God, not in the
magical sense, but because with his Spirit he can imprint these
attitudes in our hearts and in our flesh, and can make us true
instruments of his peace. And, going further, the Apostle says that
peace is a gift of God because it is the fruit of his reconciliation
with us. Only if we allow ourselves to be reconciled with God can
human beings become artisans of peace.
“Dear Brothers and Sisters, today we
ask the Lord together, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary,
for the grace to have a simple heart, the grace of patience, the
grace to struggle and work for justice, to be merciful, to work for
peace, to sow peace and not war and discord. This is the way which
brings happiness, which leads to blessedness”.
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