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Peace Sunday – 17 January 2016

newsletter,

Overcome indifference and win peace

In his World Peace Day message this year Pope Francis invites us to reflect on how we can hope for peace without working to challenge the causes of violence and injustice in our world today. Time and again he has spoken of our ‘throw-away culture’ which dehumanises and destroys the human person, whether through war and conflict or economic injustice.

Peace is to be worked at, and we are greatly heartened by the outpouring of empathy and action that surrounds the current crisis we face of refugees fleeing war and conflict. But unless we combine this with work to stop the causes of war – the global arms trade and our part within it; the billions spent annually on war and war preparations – we will not win peace.

Indeed, how can we hope for peace while we tolerate indifference, letting ourselves remain unmoved by the dramatic situation of so many of our brothers and sisters, and if we do not seek to understand the causes of so much pain and difficulty? Peace will only come when we ask ourselves and our political leaders why conflicts prove so hard to resolve: whose interests are being served by their continuation? Could the $1776 billion spent annually on weapons and war preparations have anything to do with it? What is it that has displaced 59.5 million people from their homes and driven more than 19.5 million of them beyond their homelands’ borders? How come a billion people still live on less than $1.25 per day, that 32% of the world’s population lacks proper sanitation and that 663 million people have no safe drinking water? Not to ask these questions, to be content with the status quo on which our own relative prosperity is based, is itself indifference – and it eats away at the soul.

We cannot do everything. But we can all do something, and make ourselves true friends and servants of the poor. It is inconvenient and hard at times, of course, to open our eyes and hearts; but infinitely worth it because, as Pope Francis promises us, beyond indifference is the prize we seek, the prize of peace.
As in recent years, a Peace Candle will move around each of our 3 Churches for three weeks at a time, starting with Christ the King. Sign up for one of the two day slots, and let the light of our Peace Candle inspire you to prayer and maybe challenge you to action.

Fr Matthew (incl, material from Pax Christi resources paxchristi.org.uk)

Prayer to the three kings

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(by convert to Catholicism Evelyn Waugh)

Like me, you were late in coming.
The shepherds were here long before, even the cattle.
They had joined the chorus of angels before you were started.
For you the primordial discipline of the heavens had to be relaxed
and a new defiant light set to blaze amid the disconcerted stars.
How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating,
where the shepherds had run barefoot.
How odd you looked on the road, attended by what outlandish liveries, and laden with such preposterous gifts.
You came at length to the first stage of your pilgrimage
and the great star stood still above you.
What did you do? You stopped to call on King Herod.
Deadly exchange of compliments
in which there began that un-ended war
of mobs and magistrates against the innocent.
Yet you came, and were not turned away.
You too found room before the manger.
Your gifts were not needed, but they were accepted
and put carefully by, for they were brought with love.
In that new order of charity that had just come to life,
there was room for you, too.
You were not lower in the eyes of the holy family than the ox or the ass. You are our special patrons, and patrons of all latecomers,
of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth,
of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation,
of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt,
of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.
May we, too, before and at the end find kneeling-space in the straw. For His sake Who did not reject your curious gifts,
pray always for all the learned, the oblique, and the delicate.
Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God
when the simple come into their kingdom.

Amen