Villa la Paz Newsletter June 2016

Peace: a state of tranquillity or quiet; harmony in personal relations; a state of security or order within a community provided by law or custom; a state or period of mutual concord between governments

Keep your eyes on the prince of peace, the one Who doesn’t cling to His divine power; the one Who refuses to turn stones into bread, jump from great heights and rule with great power; the one Who says, “Blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness; the one Who touched the lame, the crippled and the blind; the one Who speaks words of forgiveness and encouragement; the one Who dies alone, rejected and despised. Keep your eyes on Him Who becomes poor with the poor, weak with the weak, and Who is rejected with the rejected. He is the source of all peace.
Henri J.M. Nouwen

Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves…..and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.
Etty Hillesum
Jewish Holocaust victim who died at Auschwitz, 1943

We are each an ember in the mind of God and we are each sent to illumine the other through the dark passages of life to sanctuaries of truth and peace.
Joan Chittister, OSB

Peace. It seems so far off, so impossible to attain. We hear of wars, destruction, death in the far corners of the world and shootings, murder, robberies in our cities and, perhaps, in our own neighbourhoods. What is the source of this “unpeace”, this violence? Its source is our inability to truly understand our relationship to one another. At its root it is not due to ethnic differences, religious differences or cultural differences. If we each harboured in our hearts that no matter what our superficial differences are we are all children of one Father peace would reign. It should not matter that we speak different languages, worship in different religions, do not share the same cultural values. We are all children of the same Father Who loves each one of us equally. If that fact is not grasped or understood there will never be peace on earth. Language, culture, religion, national origins will continue to divide us and provoke the violence that has been so prevalent in our world. To sow peace we must realize that we are all equal in the eyes of God. Education, wealth, talent, social status do not confer superiority of one person over another. The homeless panhandler, the president of a university and the CEO of a large organization have the same dignity as children of God and should treat each other so. This is where peace begins, where individuals see in each other their God-given dignity and equality, reclaim the peace that has been lost through the stratification of society and radiate that peace to others. Our home for children is a microcosm of ethnic, language and religious differences. Some of our children enter the home unable to speak Spanish and speak Quechua, the Inca language that is so prevalent in the rural areas. Some are Catholic and others belong to different Protestant sects. They come from different regions of the country with different cultural values, customs and dialects. And yet, I have never witnessed discrimination or conflict because of these differences. We enter the world with a clean slate as peaceful beings free of bigotry and it is only through our exposure to the world with its artificial divisions do we lose that innate peace. We must keep our children’s slate clean and their God-given gift of peace intact.

I want to end this message with a prayer of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a Catholic nun who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of l979 for her promotion of world peace through her care for the poor. I urge you to listen to her Nobel Prize acceptance speech which can be found in You Tube or Google.

Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our fellow man throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands their daily bread and by our understanding love give peace and joy.

We thank you for your support of our children and for fostering peace among them and their families. We love you and wish you God’s peace.