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Even as we depart anew from the slavery of sin towards the freedom of holiness, let us resolve to influence the culture all around us, moving it from a godless secularity that enslaves so many people towards a renewed vision of faith in whose light human dignity is seen and a civilization of justice, love, and peace is built.

Praying for peace means humbly seeking our own conversion of mind and heart, for we all have our role to play in manifesting the Kingdom of God in today’s world.

Finally, let us beseech the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, the Queen of Peace. Through her intercession, may Christ, the Prince of Peace, reign in human hearts, even those hearts that have hatched aggressive plans to subjugate innocent and peace-loving peoples. Thank you for the privilege of addressing you this morning. May God bless you and keep you in his love and peace.

It’s no secret that we live in angry culture, awash in angry words. Individually, we cannot change that, but we can contribute to a more peaceful world by resolving to tone down our rhetoric and to speak the truth in love.

In this centennial year of his birth, we thank God for this good and faithful priest, for his openness to the work of the spirit, for the ways he gave to others what he first revived, for the ways he showed the relevance of faith to the needs of the human heart, and the way he helped men and women in our time to know him who has the power to save, Jesus Christ.

Only by participating in Christ love, only by sharing it, welcoming it into our hearts, do we find the grace and strength we need to forgive our enemies and to love them.

Though reigning in heaven, Mary remains close to us, her children. The Blessed Mother wants nothing more than to bring forth in us the image of her Son – the Christ of the Beatitudes.

Only the grace of the Holy Spirit can open our spiritual eyes and ears. Even so, it is not easy. We resist. We evade. We rationalize. We harden our hearts. Think of St. Augustine’s conversion described in his Confessions where he says to God, “You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped and now I pant for you. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst. you touched me and I burned for your peace.”

If Christ’s Name is emblazoned in our hearts, unworthy and limited as we are, we can be confident that his truth and love will shine in us and through us, spreading truth and goodness, joy and hope, peace and good will, no matter who we are, where we are, or what we may be facing.