Peace be with you

This week I've been reading and reflecting on the Eastertide Gospels with a poignancy beyond aching. There is the joy of encountering the Risen Jesus, and knowing his enduring presence in my life, but, more than once, his first words to his disciples are 'Peace be with you'. For far too long, we have heard these words proclaimed against a backdrop of war and conflict, somewhere in the world. Ukraine... Yemen... Sudan... and now Israel, Gaza and Iran. And, with a predictable inexorability, this is a conflict into which the UK is being dragged. 

And it was against this backdrop that I noticed the message from Pope Francis, for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, which we will celebrate this Sunday. It's short, but this year's theme - Called to sow seeds of hope and to build peace - is oh-so timely. Whatever else we are called to do or be; whatever our work, or our state of life, we are, fundamentally, and especially now, called to be people who hold on to and generate hope, and who build peace. And within this call lies, as the message says, the unshakeable rock of Christ's Resurrection, the source and cause of all joy, and hope and peace...

To be pilgrims of hope and builders of peace, then, means to base our lives on the rock of Christ’s resurrection, knowing that every effort made in the vocation that we have embraced and seek to live out, will never be in vain.  Failures and obstacles may arise along the way, but the seeds of goodness we sow are quietly growing and nothing can separate us from the final goal: our encounter with Christ and the joy of living for eternity in fraternal love. This ultimate calling is one that we must anticipate daily: even now our loving relationship with God and our brothers and sisters is beginning to bring about God’s dream of unity, peace and fraternity. May no one feel excluded from this calling! Each of us in our own small way, in our particular state of life, can, with the help of the Spirit, be a sower of seeds of hope and peace.

How, and where, can we live this call, especially now, in a world filled with war and despair...?