On this day when our ministry is celebrating the blessing of our Global Rosary for Peace, our readings at Mass proclaim to us messages both uplifting in their affirmation and almost shocking in their challenge.
Today’s passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians begins with a beautiful image of his prayer on behalf of humanity, united globally as one family: I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. And in today’s Gospel, Jesus proclaims the worldwide scope of His mission: I have come to set the world on fire!
Just an hour ago, our HCFM ministry led our global family in prayer, as hundreds of thousands of us from every nation on earth knelt before the Father. With this celebration, HCFM hopes to set the world on fire with faith, hope, and love, as people re-discover the power of prayer to transform their hearts, their families, their communities, and even their nations.
And yet, these wonderful Scriptures that affirm our efforts notwithstanding, what do we do with the very next words of Jesus, which he expounds for the rest of today’s Gospel passage: Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. We have dedicated our entire Rosary celebration today, which we have been promoting for many months, as a Global Rosary for Peace! And one of our most beautiful titles for our Lord Jesus, taken from the prophet Isaiah, is the Prince of Peace! How on earth are we to make any sense of Jesus’ own words of self-understanding?
Jesus’ shocking words safeguard us from any naïve or complacent understanding of our lives and our mission as His disciples. To put it directly, the followers of Jesus are always going to face opposition, even hostility, just as He faced opposition – even unto death on the Cross – from the very world He was sent to save. Yes, many, many people in the history of the world have heard the call of Christ and have turned their lives over to Him. But many also have not only failed to heed the call, but even have opposed it with violence; the long history of martyrs, from St. Stephen to the 21 Coptic Christians killed in 2014 by Isis, testify to this reality. Jesus desires to save all people, but Jesus knows that, in a fallen world, His mission to save will be opposed, and so, His mission to save will cause division.
And in response to this state of opposition and division, the Church equips us with a wonderful paradox, weapons of peace; perhaps the most notable, for us in HCFM, is the Rosary. When we prayed our Global Rosary for Peace, we did not have a mere sentimental experience that made us feel good. No, we recognized that these beautiful images and sounds of culture and language are precisely the response needed in a divided, hostile world. Our Rosary is a weapon, but not one that meets violence with violence, but one that meets violence with the love of Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother.
No individuals understood this power better than the saint of today, Pope St. John Paul II, and our own venerable founder, Patrick Peyton. Both of them confronted violence in the world with the spiritual weapons of the Eucharist and the Rosary. And in their efforts, both of them helped catalyze the non-violent downfall of violent regimes. We pray for their intercession, that, in our own divided world, our prayers and works may keep the light and the fire of Christ’s love burning.