Article for a parish magazine by Fr Rob Esdaile for Pax Christi

The Human Person: the Heart of Peace

• Posted on Dec 14, 2006

Pope Benedict has invited us to reflect on the theme: “The Human Person: the Heart of Peace”. At first sight the theme might seem a little odd, almost missing the point somehow. For when we think of peace and peace-making we usually think on a global level, having in mind warring power-blocs and massed armies and the threat of mass-destruction on such a scale that the individual human person seems almost irrelevant.

Yet the Pope is surely right to follow up on his predecessor’s insistence on “The Gospel of Life” and to underline that the human person is the measure of all things. No one is ever expendable. No one is ever unimportant. All are children of God, infinitely loved. All have God-given gifts that are needed for the flourishing of God’s world.

One of the great insights which our Catholic faith offers us is the ability to make connections over the whole range of personal and social life. So the Church opposes abortion for the same reason it objects to medical research using “discarded” embryos. And it challenges medical researchers for the same reason it condemns the development and use of weapons of mass-destruction. And it opposes nuclear weapons for the same reason it fights against euthanasia. And it rejects “mercy-killing” for the same reason that it champions the development of the poorest nations. And it serves the world’s poor for the same reason that it expects its own members to live chastely, whether as single people or in marriage. None of these positions may simply be discounted at whim by individual Catholics, because all of them are expressions of our fundamental conviction that each person is sacred, bearing the image of God. We may not rend the “seamless garment” of life. We may not pick-and-choose in order to decide that some people and some stages of life are worthy of respect, while others are not.

Only in the measure that our world engages in such “joined-up” thinking will it come to know peace. What an awesome - and wonderful - task we Catholics have to perform, therefore, as bearers of the Gospel of Life and as ambassadors of Christ’s peace. As Pope Benedict reminds us this Peace Sunday, the human person – everyone we meet and everyone who lives beyond our limited horizons – is truly “the heart of peace”. For respect for our brothers and sisters, known and unknown, is the only possible path to the peace that our world craves.

Pope Benedict has invited us to reflect this Peace Sunday on “The Human Person: the Heart of Peace”. His point is that unless we commit ourselves to safeguarding the rights of each person – and especially the weakest and most vulnerable – there will be no peace in our world. We have to dare to believe what St Paul tells the Corinthians: “Working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them.” We have to believe that each person, every last individual on our planet, has God-given gifts that are needed by the human community and are intended by their maker to be a source of blessing for the human family.

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