War, Peace, and Hope

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With the world on the verge of war there was a lot to pray about at Christmas morning Mass. The priest began by reminding us that our fellow Catholics in Bethlehem, the very few that are left, are celebrating their second Christmas during a time of war and deprivation.

And 2024 has been a record year for Birmingham, Ala. There have been more homicides this year than any other year in the city’s long history. Besides the horror crime spreads to the community, think of how many homes are missing someone at the table this Christmas.

In Rome, Pope Francis, who is now in a wheelchair and clearly showing his age, has declared 2025 a Jubilee Year of Hope. Hope and homicide, peace and war, compare and contrast the promise with the bloody reality of man murdering man. The priest certainly gave us something to think about amidst all the toys and tinsel.

Everyone kills, thinking some good will come of it. Good for whom? The dead? The survivors? The last time there were no wars in the world was when? Perhaps 2,000 years ago, when Christ was born? That was the short-lived era of the Pax Romana. Today, not so much peace.

In the Holy Land, death and destruction have made for a subdued feast day. Because of the somber times, even the bishop in Jerusalem has asked for all to implement a more solemn celebration of the coming of the Prince of Peace this year.

And in Eastern Europe, the two great Christian countries of Ukraine and Russia are engaging in all the classic violence of a fratricidal civil war. It will soon end not with a bang but with a whimper as the bloodied troops settle the differences that the political leaders didn’t have the brains or guts to settle without violence.

And, in Syria, the advocates of both Turkey’s neo-Ottoman Empire and Greater Israel are undoing the maps created at the peace conference at Versailles after World War I. There, liberal geniuses decided to carve up that region of the world into what they claimed were more “rational” boundaries. Such is the logical fruit of the “war to end all wars.”

Well, how rational are boundaries created out of the mouth of a cannon, the barrel of a gun, or today out of the mouth of a tank and the bomb rack of an F-16? Truly, the arms makers in America are celebrating a bumper Christmas singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” as American taxpayers buy Christmas gift bombs for our proxy warriors around the world.

So whether it is sitting on your back porch hearing gunshots in cities that have gone from desegregation by law to depopulation by murder or waiting in some foreign city for a drone of F-16 to drop down from the sky and kill every designated undesirable within a country mile of you, the culture of death is alive and well.

And if every man is our brother, as we hear on Christmas, aren’t we all collateral damage? And while the bell tolls towards midnight, the challenge for 2025 will be to find the virtue of hope. As the saying goes, I have no reason for optimism but every reason for hope.

It is faith that leads us to hope, and hope that leads us to charity. The virtue of faith is the belief that inspires us to act. The virtue of hope leads us to believe anything done for God has eternal value and is in his hands. And the virtue of charity makes even the most mundane work, done for the love of God and neighbor, great. And when charity dwells internally in enough hearts, peace will reign externally in our world and in our country. The proof is in the Christmas pudding if we are willing to unwrap the gift.