World Day of Peace | "Blessed are the Peacemakers" by Monica Dias

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be

called children of God." (Matthew 5:9)

 

As it has not happened for a long time, this year we understand why the Catholic Church dedicates the first day of the year to Peace in the World. Faced with the fire and violence of a dreadful war that has resumed here in Europe, faced with the suffering and terror of thousands of people so close to us, faced with fierce aggression with a trail of destruction and despair, we understand that peace is the first of all goods because it embraces everything, guarantees everything and conditions everything. Without peace, we walk through the darkness of fear and insecurity, where there is neither justice nor freedom, and we do not live, we only seek to survive. Through the images that reach us day after day of war, whether it be today in Ukraine or only yesterday in Yemen, we understand that peace is a precious place, where our Rights begin and where our Duty is therefore projected. In this sense, the World Day of Peace is essentially a call and not a celebration. A collective prayer. A prayer for all Women and all Men. On the first day of the year, we humbly ask God to hear our plea for the world and, at the same time, we commit ourselves to peace as a duty, which is also within our reach, or rather, in our hands, since we have been invited to be peacemakers and to take responsibility for the building of peace.

The origin of the World Day of Peace mirrors this responsibility for peace on earth. Perhaps we need to go back to Pope Paul VI's visit to the United Nations in 1965 to find the reason for this day. Faced with a turbulent world, marked by the Vietnam War as the most atrocious expression of the cold war, the Church was concerned not only by the suffering of so many human lives, but also by the possibility of an escalation of violence on a global level. Marked by his visit to the UN, the General Assembly of the Voice of the Peoples and the Security Council of the Power of Five, the Pope published the following year the Encyclical Christi Matri Rosarii (1966) and made the prayer to Mary and for world peace culminate on 1 January 1968. The first day of the year in the civil calendar is thus established as the moment when we look at peace simultaneously as a request, but also as a call and a duty that symbolically commits to an "agenda for peace". In a way, Pope John XXIII's 1963 Encyclical Pacis in Terris already reflected the same call for peace, which the missile crisis had made even more urgent, and which it was therefore important to amplify, raising awareness of the fragility of peace and the need for a greater commitment by Christians to its difficult preservation and continuous reconstruction, as Pope John Paul II also recalled in his 2003 message.     

Since 1968, the messages of the World Day of Peace have provided important guidance as we go through the year hoping that peace is a real possibility, even in dark times. And over more than half a century, the perception of peace has indeed become more present, broader, covering topics such as education, social justice and the fight against poverty, Human Rights, inter-religious and cultural dialogue, the role of women, support for refugees, forgiveness and reconciliation, humanitarian aid or environmental protection. It is interesting to note, however, that as universal and timeless as the messages of peace have been, they have always been able to integrate a reflection on the respective present moment and alert people to particular and concrete situations, calling the community of Catholics to prayer, but also to the renewal of their hope in peace and consequently to their contribution (direct or indirect, large or small) to the resolution of conflicts and the establishment of peace.       

In 2013 Pope Benedict XVI reminded us precisely of this role we play as peacemakers and more recently, exactly one year ago, on January 2022, Pope Francis called our attention to the tools needed to build peace, as if we were artisans in a ceaseless intergenerational dialogue involving all the peoples of the earth. As if the first day of the year were the beginning of a craftsman's work and peace began with our hands.

It was probably the philosopher Immanuel Kant who most rigorously projected this perception of the blessed as peacemakers into a secular context, making peace not only a moral but above all a political duty. In The Way to Perpetual Peace (1795), it is therefore pointed towards the creation of laws and institutions capable of resolving conflicts in a "civilised" manner and of fostering a guarantee for peace. It is thus interesting to note that the messages of the World Day of Peace also bear a "Kantian" trait, since they take on, despite their religious formulation, a strong political character, which translates in particular into an open appeal not only to the peoples of the earth as a brotherhood, but also to politicians, decision-makers and world leaders as agents of power and potential peacemakers, that is, peacemakers par excellence.  

On this horizon of messages for the World Day of Peace, that of 1 January 2023 is of particular relevance. Firstly, because it is pronounced in a time of war and enormous geopolitical instability that jeopardises our already fragile common home, be it political (that of the UN, founded on the idea of sovereignty and international law, but also that of Europe, based on the principles of the rule of law and liberty), or planetary (taking into account the nuclear threat, but also the relativisation of the environmentalist agenda). Secondly, because the peace to which we must aspire today can no longer be a mere armistice, nor even a well-intentioned Treaty among the powerful, but must be affirmed as firm ground for the reconstruction of a sustainable peace and true reconciliation. A new Minsk agreement that merely freezes the war while the fighting and hatred continue is no longer useful. Instead we need to start a dialogue (difficult, lengthy but honest) and imagine a peace in line with what the United Nations describes in its 16th sustainable development goal as a peace founded on justice and strong, inclusive and free institutions.

Undoubtedly, we are facing a complex and difficult challenge, but one that is nonetheless possible. Pope John Paul II called this "risking peace", a commitment that we should accept on behalf of all those who had already undertaken it in the past. Today, our path and our time have once again crossed this challenge, inevitably calling us to respond.

It is good to remember this commitment with light and hope on the first day of the year. Remembering that this day is only a beginning. But also a promise for the children of God. Whom we call the blessed.

Mónica Dias