My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,
As we begin the New Year, we have the wonderful message of Pope Francis’ first World Day of Peace on Jan. 1. His theme is “Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace.” The choice of our Holy Father as the Time Magazine “Person of the Year” puts Pope Francis in a position of recognition for the mark which he has made on the world in these short nine months since his election as the new Roman Pontiff. In his message on peace, he speaks, and repeats as he said once, that the world today is marked by “globalization of indifference,” which makes us “slowly inured to the sufferings of others and closed in on ourselves.”
Pope Francis goes on to quote Pope Benedict XVI who said, “Globalization makes us neighbors, but does not make us brothers.”
The phenomenon of globalization has brought our world ever closer together. It also has revealed that great indifference that we have for one another. Communication and the modern media have made the sufferings of the world around us ever present to us. But the will to change the root causes of this suffering and deprivation has yet to be formed.
The Holy Father uses the Biblical words from Genesis, “Where is your brother?” (Gen. 4:9). These are the words that God speaks to Cain who has murdered his brother and hidden his body. These words also are relevant for us, “Who is our brother, where is our brother?”
Our brothers and sisters are all around us. As we hear in the New Testament from Matthew 23:8, “And you will all be brothers.” Yes, for you only have one father and you are all brothers and sisters. The basis of fraternity is found in God’s fatherhood. And, yet, we find it so difficult to embrace one another as brothers and sisters on the local and international level. The teaching of Jesus makes it clear that our common fatherhood requires us to treat each other in a different way. It is a universal call to acknowledge our interdependence on one another.
The Holy Father goes on to quote the great encyclical of Pope Paul VI, “Populorum Progressio” (On the Development of People) and on the 20th anniversary of its publication, “Sollicitudo Rei Socialis,” by Pope John Paul II. Both of these encyclicals explain the necessity of Christian solidarity which enables us in a special way to recognize the globalization in a world that was becoming more and more evident during the writing of these two encyclicals.
Principle of Fraternity
In Pope Benedict’s encyclical “Caritas in Veritate,” “Charity in Truth,” we see a clear understanding in the midst of a universally recognized globalized world the need for the principle of fraternity which is the only answer we have as Christians in fighting poverty in all of its forms.
Pope Francis urges us to rediscover fraternity in all of the necessary places in a globalized world – first of all in the economy where nations are treated equitably no matter what their economic situation.
He then goes on to remind us that fraternity will extinguish war and bring situations of conflict to peaceful solutions. He warns, however, that corruption and organized crime threaten fraternity which underlies the evils of our day, such as arms trafficking and the trafficking of persons. The evils of drug abuse and drug trafficking are also mentioned in this insightful call to global solidarity.
Our Holy Father ends his message by reminding us that fraternity helps us to preserve and cultivate nature itself, because without care of the natural resources which God has given to us, there are inevitable conflicts and depletion of natural resources will occur.
Perhaps during this New Year, we can put out into the deep with Pope Francis as he calls us to a new relationship with one another based in the Gospel call to live as brothers and sisters. Pope Francis has captured the world’s imagination, but we must not only be surprised by what he says. We must take to heart what he says and put it into Heaven.
