Message for the LVIII World Day of Peace

A disarmed heart to achieve peace, open to pardon and to forgive to God's mercy. This is one of the appeals which Pope Francis has for every person in his message for the LVIII World Day of Peace on 1st January, which title is "Forgive us our trespasses: grant us your peace".

The Day is located at the beginning of the celebration of the Jubilee, "event that inspires us to seek to establish the liberating justice of God in our world" (3). This justice must reach everyone, none must be left out.

However, we also should consider the "structures of sin" discussed by Saint John Paul II, which affects us and causes us to lack hope of injustice. This situation should lead us to reflect on the responsibility of every person in unfair situations in our current world, from dehumanization suffered by migrants and the exploitation of the weakest ones through economic systems, modes of production and consumerist desire, which promote a culture of discard and entails an environmental decay, "the confusion willfully created by disinformation, the refusal to engage in any form of dialogue and the immense resources spent on the industry of war (4)", without forgetting a lot of open warlike conflicts and growing instability in lots of States due to their political situation.

Only from the acceptance of this collaboration in the structure of sin the request of pardon which Jesus taught us makes sense: "forgive us our trespasses" and opens us the path for personal conversion to cause the cultural and structural change that ends with injustices and build a Kingdon from peace. "Peace does not only come with the end of wars but with the dawn of a new world, a world in which we realize that we are different, closer and more fraternal than we ever thought possible" (14), where there is no place for selfishness or discouragement, but allow ourselves to be flooded by the mercy of God's pardon and forgive by feeling "we need one another and are indebted one to another" (8).

On the other hand, personal conversion should not make us forget the responsibility of the governments and the economic structures. For that reason, three actions are offered to achieve that change which comes from hope and creates new structures that will restore justice, human dignity and creation. The first one is the reduction, or even cancellation, of the debt of least developed countries, taking into account, moreover, the most developed countries have ecology debt that makes the situation of the first ones worse. The second one is the promotion of human dignity, in every movement of life. Special reference is made to the death penalty, which still exists in some countries. It is essential to recover the culture of life. And the last one, the redistribution of waste: less money for arms, more funds for the elimination of hunger, promotion of sustainable development and education for childhood and youth, which boosts the hope for their development and future; a future able to leave behind a past of hopeless and open wounds.

The message ends with a prayer, which invites us to communion and to spirituality and that locates us again in the responsibility of everyone as a co-creator of new structures of justice and hope, which has been mentioned before. In this sense, Francis reminds us of some gestures that come from the simplicity and tenderness: "a smile, a small gesture of friendship, a kind look, a ready ear, a good deed" (14) and with no doubt are within our grasp, with our prayer, to start the beginning of the so necessary structural change.

María Cruz Hernández, Justice and Peace Albacete