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Homilies - Bishop Brendan Leahy

World Day of Prayer for Peace 2025

World Day of Prayer for Peace 2025

Our Lady, Help of Christians Parish, Milford, Limerick

Homily Notes of Bishop Brendan Leahy

A week ago, on Christmas Eve, in opening the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Pope Francis formally opened what is called a Jubilee Year, a Holy Year.  He has given a theme for this year: pilgrims of Hope.

In the Bible we read of how the people of Israel every fifty years would have a Jubilee year in which they “re-set” their relationships with God, with one another and with the land. It was a year to recognize they were all sisters and brothers of the one God and therefore any form of oppression among them should be done away. All those who were in slavery were set free to return to their communities and it was to be a time when injustices were removed, debts were forgiven and both the people and the land got things back in order for themselves, including taking time to rest as like on the Sabbath.

Since 1300 the Church has taken up this tradition and celebrated a jubilee year every now and then. It now celebrates it every 25 years. This Year’s celebration of the World Day of Peace, therefore, is taking place in the context of a Jubilee Year. Pope Francis has issued a message for this World Day of Peace focusing on forgiveness of our debts as a way to experience God’s peace among us. It’s a powerful message well worth reading in its entirety. It’s available online. As we move into a new year, I note the Pope’s words: “the future is a gift meant to enable us to go beyond past failures and to pave new paths of peace”. I want to draw out a few points from the Pope’s message.

The basic point Pope Francis makes is that we are all children of God the Father and so sisters and brothers of each other. All of us have been created by God. All of us have received God’s mercy and forgiveness and all of us are in debt to God because he has given us all. God’s mercy has been generous towards us. This is the glance we should always have on life and, on this basis, make our calculations. Because God has a plan for our world to make of us a family, we need each other. We are interdependent. And yet too often in our world, “structures of sin” can rise where injustice works its way into systems and becomes consolidated in forms of oppression and exploitation. As the Pope puts it, “all manner of disparities”, can arise, “the inhuman treatment meted out to migrants, environmental decay, the confusion willfully created by disinformation, the refusal to engage in any form of dialogue and the immense resources spent on the industry of war. All these, taken together, represent a threat to the existence of humanity as a whole.”

In this Jubilee Year of Hope, the Pope is making a plea to break the bonds of injustice and to proclaim God’s justice. He writes “sporadic acts of philanthropy are not enough. Cultural and structural changes are necessary, so that enduring change may come about.” And he makes three proposals.

The first and main one has to do with the need by world leaders to tackle the issue of world debt crisis where poorer countries find themselves crippled by the mounting debt to rich countries. It is often the poorer countries that also suffer the impact of the ecological crisis. The Pope urges the international community to work towards forgiving foreign debt in recognition of the ecological debt existing between the North and the South of this world. Because of the North’s environmental sins, the South suffers the consequences. His is an appeal for solidarity, yes, the Pope says, but above all for justice. In calling for substantially reducing, if not cancelling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations, Pope Francis also invites leaders to consider a new financial framework that must be devised, leading to the creation of a global financial Charter based on solidarity and harmony between peoples.

A second proposal by Pope Francis is that we all make a firm commitment to respect for the dignity of human life from conception to natural death. In Ireland this resonates for us when we consider proposals to promote assisted suicide.

A third proposal the Pope makes is to use at least a fixed percentage of the money earmarked for armaments to establish a global Fund to eradicate hunger and facilitate in the poorer countries educational activities aimed at promoting sustainable development and combating climate change.  The Pope often laments how much goes on armaments and how little on helping people in situations of need. Just think last year 2.44 trillion U.S. dollars were spend on military spending. 

I’ll conclude with the Pope’s own prayer expressing a hope that 2025 may be a year in which peace flourishes! “May we seek the true peace that is granted by God to hearts disarmed: hearts not set on calculating what is mine and what is yours; hearts that turn selfishness into readiness to reach out to others; hearts that see themselves as indebted to God and so prepared to forgive the debts that oppress others; hearts that replace anxiety about the future with the hope that every individual can be a resource for the building of a better world.”

Disarming hearts is where it all begins and that’s where this New Year’s Day gives us a chance to make our proposal for the New Year that we may live with disarmed hearts. It’s about ushering in the dawn of a new world, a world in which we realize that we are different, closer and more fraternal than we ever thought possible. It’s surely a message Our Lady, Mother of God, Mother of the Church and the mother of each one of us, wants to heed. She is the Mother of Peace, who teaches us peace, who wants us to pave new paths of peace for the sake of future generations.