A couple of writers have referred to a meditation written by then Cardinal Ratzinger after the 2002 World Day of Prayer for Peace held in Assisi a few months after 9/11. It htook me a couple of days to unearth it because I mistakenly tried to search for it first in the 'Archives' section of 30 GIORNI where the search kept on saying '0 results', when I should have gone to the back issues file, where you can click on the month and year you need, and voila!, you have the entire issue within mouse reach! So a bit late, but here's a translation.
The splendor of Francis's peace
by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
Translated from the January 2002 issue of 30 GIORNI
Left illustration: Giotto, St. Francis praying in San Damiano, from Giotto's paintings of scenes from Francis's life, Upper Basilica of St, Francis, Assisi; center, a Muslim representative lights a candle for peace in Assisi, 2002; and right, John Paul II with non-Christian religious leaders.
When, on Thursday, January 24 (2002), under skies threatening rain, the train got under way for Assisi with a great number of representatives of the Christian churches and ecclesial communities, along with represetnatives of many world religions, to speak and pray for peace, the train seemed to me a symbol of our pilgrimage through history.
Indeed, are we not all passengers on the same train? Is it not a grand ambition, and simultaneously, a splendid sign of hope, that for its destination, this train has chosen peace and justice, the reconciliation of peoples and religions?
Everywhere, passing through the train stations, great crowds had gathered to greet the pilgrims for peace. In the streets of Assisi and under the great tent, which was the place for the common witness given by all the participants, we were surrounded by enthusiasm and a joy filled with gratitude, particularly by sizable contingents of young people.
On the way, as well as in Assisi, the people's greeting was directed primarily at the man in white. Men and women who in daily life might usually face each other with hostility or seem separated by insurmountable barriers, came out to greet the Pope who. with the force of his personality, the profundity of his faith, the passion it gives him in working for peace and reconcilitation, has seemed to have drawn the impossible from the charism of his office - in order to bring together in a pilgrimage for peace representatives of divided Christianity as well as those of the world's major religions.
But the applause directed, above all, at the Pope, also expressed a spontaneous consensus in favor of all those who seek peace and justice. It was a sign of the profound desire for peace that individuals feel in the face of the dewvastations surrounding them, devastations provoked by hatred and violence.
Even if at times, hatred appears to be invincible and seems to multiply endlessly in spirals of violence, here in Assisi, for a moment, the power of God's presence, the power of peace, was perceived.
I was reminded of the words of the Psalm: "With my God to help, I can leap a wall" (Ps 18,30). God does not set us one against the other. He who is One, who is the Father of all, helped us, at least for a moment, to leap the walls that divide us, making us acknowledge that God is peace, and that we cannot be near him if we are far from peace.
In his address, the Pope cited another cornerstone of the Bible, Paul's statement in the Letter to the Ephesians: "Christ is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh" (Eph 2, 14).
In the New Testament, peace and justice are names for Christ [e.g, "for Christ, our justice" (1Cor 1,30). As Christians, we should not conceal this conviction. And on the part of the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch, the confession of Christ our peace was clear and solemn.
But precisely because of this, something else united us beyond frontiers: the common pilgrimage for peace and justice. And the words a Christian ought to say to others who are on the same journey to those goals, are the same that the Lord used in replying to the scribe who recognized in the double commandment to love God and one's neighbor a synthesis of the Old Testament message, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God" (Mk 12,34).
For a corect understanding of the event in Assisi, it is important to consider that it was not a self-presentation by the religions as though they were interchangeable. It was not an affirmation of equality among religions, which does not exist.
Assisi was rather the exprression of a a common journey, a search, a pilgrimageo for peace, which is peace only if it comes with justice. Indeed, wherever there is no justice, wherever individual rights are denied, the absence of war can only be a veil which hides injustice and oppression.
With their resp4ective testimonials for peace, with their commitment for peace with justice, the representatives of the religions have undertaken - to the limits of their possibilities - a journey which should be, for all, a journey of purification.
And this goes for us Christians. We shall have truly come to Christ only if we have arrived at peace and justice. Assisi, the city of St. Francis, can be the best illustration of this thought.
Even before his conversion, Francis had been a Christian, like most of his fellow citizens. Even the victorious army of Perugia that cast him into prison in defeat, was made up of Christians. And it was only when he was defeated, suffering, a prisoner, that he started to think about Christianity in a new way.
It was only after that experience that it became possible for him to hear - and to understand - the voice form the Crucifix that spoke to him in the small ruined church of San Damiano - which was the very image of the Church in Francis's time, a Church that was profoundly worn out and decadent.
Only then did he see how the nudity of the Crucified Lord, his poverty and his extreme humiliation were in contrast to the luxury and violence that had seemed normal to him.
Only then did he come to truly know Christ and to understand that the Crusades were not the right way to defend the rights of Christians in the Holy Land, but that rather, Christians had to follow the message literally to imitate the Crucified One.
From this man, from Francis, who responded fully to the call of the crucified Christ, still emanates today the splendor of a peace which convinced a Muslim sultan and can truly bring down walls.
If we as Christians undertake our journey to peace following the example of St. Francis, we should not fear that we could lose our identity - it is precisely when we find it.
And if others join us in the search for peace and justice, neither they nor us should fear that truth shall be trampled under the weight of readymade platitudes.
No, if we seriously move together towards peace, then we are on the right way because it is the way of the God of peace (Rom 15,32) whose face has become visible to us Christians through our faith in Christ.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/01/2011 23:13]