The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti

Third Sunday in Advent

Dec. 12, 1999

Third Sunday Advent

On a very cold Friday afternoon, Jan. 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy took the oath of office as President of the United States. For those of us who remember his words we recall that they were words announcing a new time—remember?

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support and friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

We choose to go the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

These words of President Kennedy’s Inaugural address and his speech at Rice University both bespeak of a vision during a time when much of the nation and the world were groping for hope in the wilderness years of the early 60’s. These words were an announcement of a "new thing", a "new time", and a "new adventure," after desert and the testing time following WWII.

The Baptist announced that God was drawing near with the promised One, the time of the messiah. It was a time that came after many years of Israel not hearing from a prophet of God. It was a time that was like emerging from the wilderness—that time of preparation that signaled God was going to act very soon.

The prophet Is. tells us that the time of the messiah will be one when God’s liberating power will set about the task of bringing justice and setting people free from the various slaveries that keep them down. It is a time when debts will be released, forgiven so that all will be free to begin again.

Yet this announcement by the Baptist and Is. requires a response on our part. Paul reminds the Thessalonians that we attend to this proclamation in a life of prayer and response to this announcement. It is a life of not simply avoiding evil, but of promoting the good. God’s special arrival in the messiah will be continued in the messianic people, the Church—announcing the message of hope and new times and adventure in words and deeds of justice-seeking and peacemaking.

The messianic people of God are charged with the task of announcing that God will act again with the arrival of the fullness of the Kingdom. This announcement is a message of God’s liberating power in a world where over I billion people are deprived of drinkable water, still live under the nuclear danger, and yet, is open to the possibilities of almost unlimited human progress.

We stand on the cusp of a new time. The Jubilee year is around the corner. It is a time of forgiving debts, of setting free. We as people of the First World can call upon our leaders to answer the U.S. Catholic Bishops call for Third World debt forgiveness—imagine the billions set free to begin again!

We can also announce a year of freedom from the compulsion to consume in a world of growing resource scarcity, and the freedom to live at a slower pace of life. We can, in the Spirit of Christ, announce a new time with new and hopeful possibilities to ignite the imagination for goodness and justice to find a home in our world.

The prophet and the Baptist came with the good news, we are to do the same in what we say and do. Pres. Kennedy captured some of this at the end of his inaugural speech when he said:

The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world…

….With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessings and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Uploaded January 14, 2000