14th Sunday Reflection: Becoming Artisans Of Peace
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage – Becoming Artisans Of Peace – 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time – (Luke 10:1-12,17-20)
Pax et Bonum! Peace and Good! The proclamation of St Francis reflects the gospel message of peace to be proclaimed by Jesus’ disciples to all of creation, without discrimination. This greeting of peace discloses the essence of God.
This is the work of Heralds and not Merchants. It is a message that finds root in hearts of Peace. Without this peace in our own hearts, we cannot understand the message, let alone proclaim it. This is the reason that activism rooted in an angry heart will always implode.
When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she affirmed her own message of active nonviolence: “We in our family don’t need bombs and guns, to destroy or to bring peace; just get together, love one another… And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world”. The force of arms is deceptive. “While weapons traffickers do their work, there are poor peacemakers who give their lives to help one person, then another and another and another”; for such peacemakers, Mother Teresa is “a symbol, an icon of our times”.
Jesus also lived in violent times. Yet he taught that the true field of battle, where violence and peace meet, is the human heart, for ‘it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come’.
Christ’s message in this regard offers a radically positive approach. He unfailingly preached God’s unconditional love, which welcomes and forgives.
Jesus marked out the path of non-violence that he walked to the very end, to the cross, whereby he became our peace and put an end to hostility. Whoever accepts the Good News of Jesus is able to acknowledge the violence within and be healed by God’s mercy, becoming in turn an instrument of reconciliation. In the words of Saint Francis of Assisi: “As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that you have greater peace in your hearts”.
This Love of God that we participate in and reflect to each other is the reality of the kingdom of God within us and with us. This is the proclamation that we are called to make as we resonate with God’s Love. It was not the administration of resources that occupied the disciples sent into the world. Neither are we, as disciples, called to be administrators of resources, but rather to become ministers of grace to each other.
The gathering of the Beloved Assembly, as a family, rejects the nature of the great beast of Babylon that runs itself as a business. Pope Francis has issued a similar ringing condemnation of churches that adopt models of management drawn from the world of business and those pastors who succumb to the temptations of worldly success and power.
What Jesus offered and what we seek is that intimate experience of the Eucharistic gathering where everyone knows and cares about each other. To know, accept and care for each other as a family immersed in the vulnerability of love where there is “no Jew or Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for all one in Christ Jesus”.
This is a fire that is now burning, the glory and the gift of the Holy Spirit to redirect, refine, and renew.
This is how we dedicate ourselves to God and to Peace, recognizing and actively banishing violence from our hearts, from our words, and from our actions. With prayerful contemplation we become nonviolent people out of which grows nonviolent families and communities. This is the Peace that can and will overcome the violence of our world.
“… instead of loving what you think is peace, love others and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmongers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another.” (Thomas Merton)
“Nothing is impossible if we turn to God in prayer. Everyone can be an artisan of peace” (Pope Francis)
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