Assisi Day of Prayer for World Peace : 24 January 2002

A detail from a painting by Giovanni Cimabue, in the lower level of the Basilica at Assisi.

The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in San Francisco

Homilies from the National Shrine
of Saint Francis of Assisi

ASSISI DAY OF PRAYER FOR WORLD PEACE
24 JANUARY 2002

[Luke 11:25-37]

FOR ALMOST TWO THOUSAND YEARS this story has stood at the very center of the Church’s reflections upon the Christian moral life. For the parable of the good Samaritan conveys with a unique power and clarity what it means to live as a disciple of the Lord, to reach out to all those whom we encounter in this world with that same self-sacrifice and compassionate and caring love which was in the heart of Jesus himself when he walked on this earth.

Because of this centrality of the call to Christ-like love in Christian moral theology, the parable of the Good Samaritan has also been a primary prism through which the Church has wrestled with the issues of war and peace in this earthly city of God. For the early fathers of the Church, the parable was a rich font for Christian pacifism. They pointed to the victim by the side of the road, who was a Jew, in many ways the enemy of the Samaritan, and asked: if we are called to risk our lives for the stranger, the foreigner, the enemy, by stopping by the side of the road and binding up his wounds, how can we then inflict more wounds upon him in war? The implications of Jesus’ call to radical and universal love were clear and compelling. In Tertullian’s words, “If we are enjoined to love our enemies, whom have we to hate? If injured we are forbidden to retaliate. Who then can suffer injuries at our hands?”

For Saint Augustine, surveying in the fifth century the devastation wrought by the barbarian invasions, the parable of the Good Samaritan demanded a quite different response. What, he asked, if the Samaritan had been journeying down the road half an hour before when the robbers were still beating the man by the side of the road? What then would have been the loving response? For Augustine, the Christ-like response would have been to restrain the evil being visited upon the man, even if mortal violence were necessary.

Thus the parable of the Good Samaritan became for Augustine and the medieval Church a foundation for a just war theology which accepts, always with deep regret, limited actions in war designed to prevent grave evil. War is always to be avoided unless as a last resort, they held, always to be mourned and always undertaken with the least violence necessary. But if war is vital to the defense of the rights of the vulnerable from a grave evil, then the Christian may undertake it precisely in the name of Christ-like love.

Today’s action of the Holy Father in meeting with religious leaders from around the world in Assisi, and Archbishop Levada’s designation of this day as an interfaith day of prayer here in San Francisco, invite us to return to the parable of the Good Samaritan once again. But in our reflection upon the parable this day, we are called to focus primarily, not upon the victim of the robbers as the pacifist and just war theologians did, but upon the figure of the Good Samaritan himself. For the Samaritan was for Jesus’ listeners primarily a symbol of religious division. In pointing to the Samaritan as the pathway through which we can come to understand what true self-sacrificing love means, even in cases as complex as those which threaten war, the gospel is calling us to walk with those of other faiths in our journey of discipleship in order better to understand what love demands.

By walking with the Samaritan in faith we can better identify those parochial elements of our worldview which prevent us from seeking true justice on this earth. By praying with the Samaritan in faith we can as one human family seek the grace of God poured out upon us in the search for peace. And by working with the Samaritan in faith, we can help to build up God’s reign of justice in this world that we share.

The second Vatican Council forthrightly declared that peace is not merely the absence of war; it requires also a true community of peoples founded upon justice. This day of prayer uniting us with peoples of all faiths can mark a deepening of our own realization that we must refuse to allow divisions of faith to be causes for war or impediments to peace. We must instead create a common vision of the new heavens and the new earth which can be created through the conversion of the human heart: from war to peace, from hatred to love, from power to justice. This vision in faith must recognize that in an age when technologies of war threaten the very existence of the world, war can never be a normal tool of foreign policy. We must also recognize in union with peoples of all faiths that the massive inequities in wealth throughout the world and the continuing denial of the fundamental rights to food, shelter, medicine, and education cannot be tolerated in our world of plenty.

It is all to easy for us as people of faith in this land of wealth to walk quietly by, like the priest and the Levite, averting our eyes from the inequities of wealth, the ravages of war, and the denial of freedom which daily victimize millions lying by the side of the road in our modern world. May this day be that moment in time in which we reflect upon the injustice which breeds war and the hatreds which fan it. Let us unite in prayer and in action with the Hindu and the Orthodox, the Jew and the Buddhist, the Presbyterian and the Muslim, so that we can journey forth as Samaritans all, united in the search for true peace and true community.

Msgr. Robert W. McElroy
Saint Gregory Parish in San Mateo