Online Franjevci at Franjevacki trg 1, Subotica, Vojvodina 24000 RS - He is Our Peace

"Imagine there's no heaven it's easy if you try. No hell below us above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there's no countries it isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one. I hope some day you'll join us and the world will live as one"[1]. I think it was Plato who coined the maxim: "Philosophers are the teachers of the old; poets are the teachers of the young". Today the songwriters, not the poets are the teachers of the young; music more than poetry. How many millions of young Nor can we leave it at that without offering a response. Jesus once took his cue from what the children of his time were singing in the squares ("We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn't dance; we sang dirges, and you wouldn't be mour * * * The first question to ask is this: why make the effort to "imagine" something that we have had before our eyes right up to yesterday? A world without heaven or hell, with no religion, no loyalties to country, with no possessions, no pr "No more heaven, no more hell": neither is it the first time that these words have been heard in our world. "If God exists, man is nothing. God doesn't exist! Happiness, tears of joy! No more heaven. No more hell! Nothing but the But the same author wrote another play, Closed Doors. Three characters - a man and two women - come into a room one after the other, a short time apart. There are no windows, the light is at its brightest and there is no way to switch it off, th They pry into one another's lives until their souls are stripped bare, all the faults of which each is most ashamed are drawn out into the open and mocked mercilessly by the other two. Then one of them says to the others: "Remember the sulphur * * * The song that I quoted, however, contains a longing for something good and holy which we should not ignore, no matter how mistaken the ways it suggests to achieve it. Let's listen to another "song" about peace and unity that was written t "He is our peace and has made the two into one and broken down the barrier that used to keep them apart [...], destroying in his own person the hostility. This was to create one single New Man in himself out of the two of them and by restoring peace through the cross to unite them both in a single Body and reconcile them with God. In his own person he killed the hostility. He came to bring the good news of peace, peace to you who were far away and peace to you who were near at hand. Through him both of us have, in the one Spirit, our way to come to the Father" (Eph 2: 14 - 18). Here too, we are shown a world where all the people are "living life in peace", where all "live as one", but achieved in a very different way. "He ... has made peace, destroying in himself the enmity". Destroying enmity, n In that same era there was another great man who declared to the world that peace had come. In the ruins of a mosque in Asia Minor, a copy was found of the famous "Index of Undertakings" of the Emperor Augustus. It celebrates the Pax Roman Jesus is not concerned with this kind of peace at all, but reveals another, superior kind. He says, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives" (John 14: 27). His peace is also the "fruit * * * The Gospel way to peace makes sense not just in the private sphere of faith, but also in the political and social sphere. The world order itself demands today that Christ's way to peace replace Augustus's. The modern conscience can no longer ac It is clear to us today that the only way to peace is by destroying enmity, not the enemy (should we destroy half the population of the world dissatisfied with the way things are? And how do we identify the enemy where terrorism is concerned?). Someone Will that great President of the United States find someone to take up the tremendous challenge? Enemies are destroyed with armies, but enmity with dialogue. Before putting it to the nations, the Church, led by the Pope, is setting out to apply this pr * * * But so far we have taken in only half of the Christian message of peace. One of today's popular slogans says, "Think globally, act locally". It applies especially to peace. You can't "make peace" in the same way you m The way to make peace is exactly the opposite: scattered we may be but we begin at once, even as the only one, beginning with as little as a simple handshake. Millions of drops of dirty water will never make a clean ocean. Millions of people with no pe What sense would it make to march through the streets shouting "Peace!" if you do it with threatening fist and breaking windows as you go? It is a praiseworthy thing to hang a peace flag from your own window, but what sense would it make if i * * * But for us, gathered here, there is also something to do. Jesus came to announce "peace to those who were far away and peace to those who were near at hand". Peace with those who are "near at hand" is often more difficult than peace Shortly we will be coming forward to kiss the cross. If we do not want Jesus to look down from his cross and remind us: "Go first and be reconciled with your brother", our kiss must be intended not only for him, our head, but also for his ent There was a time when, at the end of Lent or at the end of a popular Mission, it was the custom to make a "bonfire of vanities". A fire was lit around a stake set up in the main square of the town, and all the people tossed into it all instru "Through him both of us have in the one Spirit the way to come to the Father". "Both of us" no longer means only Jews and Gentiles, but also Christians and Muslims, Catholics and Protestants, clerics and lay people, men and women, * * * Here we have the Gospel's answer to the song's "imagine": "and the world will live as one". We know the objection, "Two thousand years have passed since that time, and what has changed?" But let us make no mistake: What St Francis of Assisi said of each person is true also of the world: "What a person is before God, that he is and no more" [7] .The world is what it is in God's eyes, and before God there is, now already, On the 13th of April 1997, in the stadium of Sarajevo, the Holy Father John Paul II, prayed a prayer to God for peace. Let us join in that heartfelt cry, no less to the point today than it was at that time, after a war has only just ended and other for AI, Bishop of Rome, go down on my knees before the Lord, to cry: Free us from the pestilence of war. May your kingdom come; kingdom of justice, of peace, of forgiveness and of love. You have no love for violence and hatred, you flee from injustice and selfishness. You want all human beings to be brothers and sisters to each other and to acknowledge you as their father. Your will is peace@. May your will be done! ----------------- John Lennon, Imagine. J.-P- Sartre, The Devil and the Good, X,4 ( ed. Gallimard, Paris 1951, p. 267. J.-P. Sartre, Closed Doors, sc. 5 (ed. Gallimard, Paris 1947, p. 93). Monumentum Ancyranum, ed. Th. Mommsen 1883. St. Augustine, Confessions, X,43. Vigil, Aeneid, VI, 851. St. Francis of Assisi, Admonitions, XIX ( St. Francis of Assisi, Early Documents, I, New York 1999, p. 135).

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