Rogáte quae ad pacem sunt Ierúsalem

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem," as the Psalmist says. When we read these words we think of the Holy Land, and the Middle East. But we think also of so many cities and towns around the world torn by strife and violence. We think of Father Gregorio Lopez Gorostieta, a priest who was killed in the city of Altamirano, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, and found dead on Christmas Day. We recall also countless other men, women and children who have lost their lives due to violence in many parts of Latin America. We think also of violence in the United States, in big cities and small, daily detailed in the news, often to a people no longer sensitive to the senselessness of it all. 

It is a battle to win peace, but not one fought with conventional weapons; rather, it is a battle engaged first of all by prayer, begging from God the conversion of hearts hardened by selfish aims, and set on violent means. 

Make no mistake, the evil one delights in despair and in death. We must be armed with hope, and with a love for life. This is what animates our prayer. Prayer, in turn, fortifies our hope and love, for these two indispensable graces are rooted in the God who gives life and forgets not the cry of the poor. 

We must teach peace to our children, by showing them what it means to act justly and with compassion towards others. We must also arm our children with a love for life and the grace of hope. In short, we must teach them to pray.

We must ask our governments to seek justice also, especially for innocent victims of violence. A spirit of disrespect for human life aggresively seeks to spread its malevolent influence into ever new recesses of culture. A civil society exists to stem this advance.  

Augustine spoke of two cities, mysteriously intermingled in this world: The City of God wherein the love of God dominates the human creature, "usque ad contemptum sui", and the city of man, wherein the love of self dominates "usque ad contemptum Dei". 

But, all the better powers of the human city are insufficient to create peace if the call to become the City of God is not heard and, by God's grace, in some way heeded by all of us who dwell within the city of man. For at the end of all things, the city of man must be transformed into the City of God. This means that hearts must rise toward the heavenly Jerusalem, responding to the clarion call of our nature's Redeemer, the Crucified and Risen Christ, who shows us as man how to know peace in God, and with one another.

We must hear Him, and see Him anew, for the alternative to life in God is, in the end, no life at all. Not because God would take life from us, but because human hearts would seem at that late stage rather to prefer not to have it, seeking instead to settle for a shadow-life that venerates self-made anti-reliquaries: empty, cold cavities where fleshy hearts made for mercy had once dwelt.

As we continue in this Christmas season and prepare to enter a New Year, we renew our faith in the mercy of the Redeemer born for us. The City of God begins in Bethlehem. Its light overcomes the darkness. I invite all the faithful to offer special prayers asking for peace and justice in our border communities and for an end to violence around the world, and for the conversion of hearts set on violence. It would be most appropriate to offer these prayers before the Blessed Sacrament, or to say the Holy Rosary for this intention. The Lord hears us, and his blessed Mother prays for us. May a new light of justice and peace enter human hearts with the beginning of a new year. 

Lord Jesus Christ,  Prince of Peace, Architect and Builder of the City of God, Have Mercy on us and on the whole world.

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