The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.

23nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Keep Hope Alive

In 1983 a ten-year-old American girl sent a letter to the Premier of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov. It was the height of the renewed Cold War and her letter expressed her fears and hopes for the future. In one part of her letter she spoke of the imagined possibilities she had for the future.

In my 2001, there’s an abundance of everything, and lots of ways to harvest and transport it to the people in need.

Little Samantha Smith had the courage to imagine the possibilities of a world where the conditions that generate conflict would be a thing of the past. She wrote because she was frightened but also hopeful. So often that is the human condition. Life is not what we want it to be. The response of some if passive acceptance, the response of others is the courage and imagination to believe to work for a world that can be very different—a better world. It means keeping hope alive.

What could that blind and deaf man expect for the rest of his life? Only the same really. But then he meets Jesus and for the first time in his life he sees and hears. Meeting Jesus is the encounter with the realization of those unimagined possibilities for healing and salvation in our world. Is this not the proclamation of the prophet Is.? He announces that God is coming with healing and salvation. Now is the time to respond to this initiative by the Lord. The mere words that something is changing, that there is cause for hope unleashes a powerful force of liberation that begins to undermine the oppressive present for the healed and saving future.

The oppressed of this world, the poor, the suffering, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the economically exploited listen carefully for the liberating Word. This Word energizes people with a new vision for the world and themselves underwritten by the God of salvation that we experience in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a Word that informs us that all people, no matter their station in life, are equally valuable to God and share in equal dignity. This Word is liberating for those who have been told they are less than others, It is dangerous for those who wish others to believe they are better than others because they are smarter, thinner, or richer. James reminds us that such distinctions are not to matter if we be "in the Lord’. If they do then those who ascribe to such distinctions give lie to their faith, it is a sham an elaborate pretense of self-serving pious rubbish.

The Word the Church receives and proclaims is one that is to open the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind to hear the cries of the poor and suffering and to see their plight as one’s own. For the Christian community our mission is to be that presence of Christ to the world so that it can imagine new possibilities for healing and salvation. The Christian church is called to give voice to the "voiceless" and to help the powerful to "see" the reality of the situation of the poor and that they share in equal dignity before God with the rich. In fact, God has a special regard for the poor; can any human being afford not to have that same regard for the poor?

In the upcoming weeks, as part of the Jubilee year of the church, believers throughout the Archdiocese will be asked to read and commit themselves to the Jubilee Justice pledge. It is a pledge that promises that all will be the Lord’s voice to the powers that be on behalf of those who suffer. It is a pledge that commits each person to help the world to see the plight of the poor and coming of the saving God with new possibilities for healing and salvation. In this way the church will know what the messiahship of Jesus means and how the church is a messianic church. Then we can say who Jesus is, we can speak because we know the gift of the crucified, we know the price of following and we know what that means for our lives today.

Little S. Smith understood what it meant. She understood the role of the follower of Jesus. She spoke truth to power. She was only ten and yet she found a way. Imagine what adults can do when they are seized by the Word of God’s saving freedom? There is no limit to what can be. We are only limited by our own lack of imagination. In turning our lives over to God surprises await us and our world and the new day of salvation will be ours.

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Created September 11, 2000