How will they be able to sow peace in Syria and Iraq when in Washington there are neighbourhoods the police cannot enter???
Homily for the last Sunday of 2015
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In a few days we will say goodbye to 2015, a year full of good things, for which we thank God, along with all the graces he has granted us. His Holiness Pope Francis, who proclaimed the Year of Mercy, is of course not saying that 2015 was not a year of mercy. Perhaps opening the Year of Mercy in 2015 assures us that our Lord’s mercy has no limits in time or place; God does not take orders from people, even in the form of prayer. But with the world’s many tragedies, the Holy Father wanted to raise the dose of mercy, not so much in God’s heart as in human hearts: in my heart and yours and in the heart of each one of us. For Herod, who ordered the killing of the children, as we heard in today’s Gospel, is still ordering the killing of children and innocents in our own time, not by the thousands but by the millions, all over the world. And we cry out again with the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” But today’s Herod has taken flesh in the will of millions of mothers who, by their own personal decision, put to death perhaps billions of embryos through abortion. And today there will also be an “abortion” of adults through euthanasia laws, which give a person the right to end his own life, or give another person the right to end it for him. What is the world’s problem today??? The madness of war has killed, with its sword, human wisdom and the human love of peace. They create an enemy, arm it, train it and then go back and fight it, so the world will believe it is really dangerous. Of course, thanks to them, it has become dangerous. They talk about planting democracy by force of arms, and so democracy now needs a revolution against itself to revive the values on which it was built. And who said democracy is doing well in democratic countries? In an age of surveillance and lost privacy, if you object they frame you, or accuse you of collaboration, treason or some crime. Most people in the free world now live in fear of laws and systems set up in the name of protecting democracy. When one child is unjustly killed in a democratic country, there is an uproar, while millions of children are killed before their eyes, and sometimes under their supervision, through war, hunger, abortion, birth control and disease.
What is the world’s problem today??? Powerful states have set themselves up as police over weak states and have preyed on their peoples far more than their own rulers did. How will they be able to sow peace in Syria and Iraq when in Washington there are neighbourhoods the police cannot enter? They want to spend billions on wars in other people’s lands, while on their own soil people are dying of hunger by the roadside, millions lack the insurance they need, and the unemployed number in the millions. Millions of young people have become prisoners of addiction, new homes are wrecked every day, and people still choose hatred and reject love. The Herod of money laundering, the Herod of money worship, the Herod of the mafia, the Herod of drug trafficking, the Herod of the trade in human organs, the Herod of political corruption, the Herod of power, the Herod of cosmetic surgery and cosmetics, the Herod of marginalizing others, smearing their reputation and trampling their dignity, the Herod of pornography and the destruction of moral values, the Herod of fashion and excessive wealth, the Herod of envy, resentment, hatred and divorce, and of same-sex marriage, the Herod of the abuse of children and minors, the Herod of violence against women, and so on and on… an endless list of Herods that dominate us, our destiny, our present and our future, even more than our past.
What is the world’s problem today??? We see even shepherds exploiting their children, and children exploiting their shepherds, as if some of us in the Church were longing more for Christ’s slap and whip than for his Gospel and his salvation. As shepherds, we want to smell of the flock, said the great Pope Francis; and if only we could also see a flock that smells of its shepherds!
The world’s problem today is that it has forgotten where the solution is, and the solution is simple: put the cornerstone back in its place, at the foundation, and that is Jesus, the Gospel of Jesus, the Heart of Jesus, the Good News of Jesus, his easy yoke, his saving cross and his words, the like of which no man has ever spoken. The solution is in his mercy and in our mercy toward one another. The solution is to awaken conscience, to sacrifice for the truth, and to love first the people of our own household and then everyone. To raise our children to love peace, choose peace and make peace, and to reject violence, war, weapons, the principle of force and domination and the oppression of others. The solution is to acknowledge again, in word and deed, that people are more important than the Sabbath, that peace is stronger than war, that a child is more important than pets, that human dignity is above the dignity of a tree (with all my love for animals and all of nature and creation), and that building people is more important than building towers and skyscrapers. The solution is to convince Black and white people to accept being in the same class and the same school in some neighbourhoods of New York and other American cities, before they accept being in the same tank, the same submarine and behind the same cannon. If they don’t come together for learning, why do they come together for war?
My prayer, my wish and my hope today, on the last Sunday of the year, is that a day will come when Rachel is comforted and no child is ever again killed, sold or thrown into a camp.
Amen.
Archbishop Ibrahim Ibrahim, Melkite Catholic eparch of Canada
