The year 2016 is about to end and we are about to begin another year. How fast time has flown! It wasn’t too long ago when we began with wishes for happiness, prosperity and peace, always hoping that the coming year will be better than the year that had just passed.
Some 2,000 years ago, a baby, who would be known as the Prince of Peace was born, and the angels announced the glad tidings of His birth, proclaiming “peace on Earth to men of good will.” But it seems that peace has been elusive over the past millennia, the world over the centuries being wracked by wars, violence and hatred.
Why has our world failed to achieve this peace that was gifted to us through the miracle of a God, who, out of love, came down to be one with us and to teach us the way of peace? The answer it seems to me lies in the way that the other half of the angels’ message has been amended to something more secularly acceptable. Of course, we would wish “good will to men,” as well, but this can really be achieved only if we fulfill the condition…that peace will come to men who are of good will.
The last year with a national election that catapulted a popular provincial mayor to the presidency continues to be a circus with politicians, wannabes and all sorts of creatures coming out of the woodwork claiming to be the messiah for our poor benighted land, with no less than the new president, saying that he will abolish crime, corruption and drug abuse in his term. Finger-pointing is going to be the order of the day whether he be an administration lackey or an oppositionist self-righteously accusing the opponent of being corrupt, a cheat, a coddler of murderers, whatever…perhaps, we need to remember that incident when Jesus, writing on the ground said, “He, who is without sin, should cast the first stone,” and all those holier-than-thou accusers crept away guiltily. But our holier-than-thou wannabes are even more self-righteous than the Pharisees!
How we long for peace! And yet, peace can really only be achieved when we become truly men of goodwill. When we recognize that we are all brothers and sisters. When we can do our job, accept our responsibilities, with honor. When we do not have to resort to muckraking just to show that we are “better”. When we can care for those less fortunate, without demeaning them with dole-outs, but truly recognizing the poor who like the rest of us have been created with the dignity of a human being in the likeness of God. When we can accept each other with our differences in race, religion, age, wealth, education and skills. When we can agree to disagree with a smile on our faces. When we can truly love.
Peace on Earth! Mercy and compassion, as our beloved Pope Francis has emphasized when he issued last December 8 Misericordiae Vultus, the bull declaring 2016 as the Extraordinary Year of Mercy and which ended on November 20. We have to ask ourselves whether we have, indeed, been merciful, whether we had striven for this in the little, sincere and humble ways of our daily lives. Whether our new saint for the year of mercy, Saint Teresa of Calcuta, has inspired us to be men of good will, whether we can honestly and truthfully say, with love in our hearts, “good will to men.” Only then can we be one with the Prince of Peace who came to bring us peace on Earth.