12/2/2013 – Monday – 1st week Advent – Isaiah 2:1-5

        Today, as we begin our first weekday mass in the holy season of Advent, we start our preparations for the coming of Jesus’ birth into the world at Christmas.  Today, we hear a very profound message from the prophet Isaiah.  He issues a challenge for world peace that is addressed to all of us, not just the powerful leaders of the nations of the world.  He uses the image of swords being beaten into plowshares.  The plowshares, for us, symbolize the hard work that it takes to feed the hungry. Our farmers don’t use plowshares anymore, but they work very hard to put food on our table.  We can see this message the Isaiah brings as an admonition to care for the neediest among us.  If you look at the central message of all the prophets in Ancient Israel, it is that God will judge his people by how they care for the neediest in society.  For Israel, this was the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in their midst. 

         Pope Paul VI put this message into other words for us to ponder: “If you want peace, work for justice.”  With the global economic crisis we are still recovering, with our own battered national economy and high unemployment rate, it is easy for us to say that there is not enough money for all the programs that help the poor in our society.  However, we cannot let Isaiah’s admonition fall on deaf ears.

          In some way, I think we can all envision our small part of working for justice. We can all work for peace in our own communities, in our own little part of the world. 
Indeed, all of us have personal “swords” that we need to turn into plowshares.  As we enter the season of Advent, this is the perfect time of year to try to do that.  We all can try to heal the anger and resentment that resides in our hearts, to mend the ruptures in our relationships.   If all of us try to change our small corners of the world even modestly, if we all try to articulate a message of peace and justice and to speak out against the culture of death in our modern world, we may have the power to realize the vision of Isaiah more than we can ever imagine.