Today, 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. On this first daily mass in the season of Advent, we hear a profound message from the prophet Isaiah issuing a challenge for world peace. This message is addressed to all of us, not just the powerful, or the rich, or the leaders. Isaiah uses the image of swords being beaten into plowshares. The plowshares symbolize the hard work that it takes to feed the hungry. Farmers in the modern world don’t use plowshares anymore, but they work very hard to put food on our table. On another level, we can interpret this message that Isaiah brings as an admonition to care for the neediest amongst us in our society. If you look at the central message of the prophets in Ancient Israel in the Old Testament, 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 a lot of people still struggling in the global economy, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer not only in our country but all over the world, working for justice is just as important today as it was in Isaiah’s day. We cannot let Isaiah’s admonition fall on deaf ears.
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 that exist. 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, 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.
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