The Way to Peace is Compassion

Advent 2024: A Pilgrimage of Hope towards Peace - the Journey Explained!

Second Monday in Advent - December 09, 2024

Isaiah 35:1-10; Luke 5: 17-26 

From the week of hope, we pass on to the week of peace, as the Sunday indicated to us. Rightly, the responsorial psalm indicates to us: I will hear what God proclaims: for he proclaims peace to his people. But what kind of peace is the Lord announcing? That is an important point to clarify to ourselves. It is a peace that comes out of a change, and not from status quo, out of a radical change!

We hear of that change in the first reading today - the blind shall see, the deaf shall hear, the lame shall leap and the mute shall shout for joy! Your sorrow will turn to joy and your hopelessness shall turn to a salvific experience! This is the kind of change that the Lord is speaking to us about. This is the peace, a joyful and fulfilling peace, that the Lord announces to us.

But how will this change come about? The Gospel responds: when we really care for each other! Just as those brethren brought that man to Jesus amidst all odds, when we go out of our way to address the sorrows and heartaches of our brothers and sisters - these changes shall take place and peace shall flourish. Unlike the pharisees and the scribes who were sitting around there waiting to judge, if we really feel the compassion that Jesus felt for the other, peace shall certainly flourish. And we shall turn out to be instruments of peace, channels of the peace of the Lord.