Annunciation of Peace

Behind the sanitized, antiseptic and cellophane portraits of Mary one can find a despised single mother with callous feet and hands, perspiration on the brow, persevering to sustain her child and herself in a milieu categorically hostile to women. Therefore in her life and canticles, many women of similar sort find hope and courage to live a life with dignity. Mary has demonstrated that it is always the least, lost and last who are likely to change the world.

Peace is never the benevolence of the dominant but the active refusal of the oppressed to engage in the ceaseless cycle of violence thereby prevent its metastasis (Lk 6:29). The world continues to be inhabitable solely because of people like Mary who denounce retributive violence even when their loved ones are killed unjustly. As Brandon James O’Neil observes;

“Where are the armies of wronged mothers, perpetuating “an eye for an eye” violence? Is there a mother denying life to another mother’s child because her own is hurting or killed? Like Mary, they stand at the feet of crosses, the scenes of death, injustice, and humiliation. But like the Sorrowful Mother, they do not passively accept this mistreatment. Sorrow is an impetus to righteous action. They share creatively and manifestly in Mary’s love through their nonviolent solutions toward the stilling of conflict.”

Christ the Word of God echoes the voice of His mother. Her Magnificat and subsequent lullabies physiologically shaped Jesus. It was from the disadvantages He and His mother experienced did Jesus grow inordinately compassionate towards women and children – the two major groups very much susceptible to violence and therefore extremely decisive in determining the course of history.

The fact that Christ a divine-human progeny is identified as the “Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6) implies that peace is a collective labour of heaven and earth; neither can achieve peace by itself.

𝘍𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘎𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 !

~ 𝐃𝐚𝐲𝐫𝐨𝐲𝐨 𝐅𝐫. 𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐥