²⁷So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27 (New International Version)

a-group-of-people-standing-next-to-each-other — Photo by Sarah Sheedy on Unsplash

St. Peter’s Basilica, 30 December 1987

When we look upon the face of the earth, we see not one simple landscape, but a world marked by valleys of want and mountains of abundance, by nations clothed in plenty and peoples still waiting at the threshold of hope.

Across the human family there run invisible frontiers—between the developed and the developing, between those who possess and those who are deprived, between voices that are heard and voices that rise like prayer from the margins. Thus people speak of a first world, a second world, a third world, and even a fourth; yet no such name can contain the full mystery of a people, nor measure the sacred dignity placed by God in every human heart, for the human person is created in the image and likeness of the Creator (Genesis 1:27).

These words are poor vessels, but they carry a grave truth: the one family of mankind, created for communion, is wounded by divisions that reach deeper than bread, deeper than borders, deeper than the calculations of power. They touch the soul. Behind these categories stand men and women with faces, children with unspoken dreams, elders bearing the memory of suffering, communities longing not for pity but for justice, not for charity alone but for fraternity. The Church, mother and servant, listening to the joys and hopes, the griefs and anguish of all peoples, cannot pass by on the other side, for the Lord has taught us in the wounded traveler and the Good Samaritan that every suffering person is our neighbor (Luke 10:25–37).

She must lift her voice like a bell in the morning air and proclaim that every nation is called to the banquet of human dignity; that development is not the cold accumulation of riches, but the flowering of the whole person and of every person; that peace is born where justice is sown, where the weak are defended, where the forgotten are brought near, and where nations learn again the ancient and holy art of becoming neighbors.

For the prophet cries, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24), and the Lord Himself says that what is done for the least of His brethren is done for Him (Matthew 25:40). Therefore, the divided map of the world becomes a mirror held before conscience. It asks whether we shall remain prisoners of indifference or pilgrims of solidarity; whether creation’s gifts shall be hoarded by a few or shared as bread for all; whether the poor shall be left at the roadside or welcomed as brothers and sisters.

The Gospel commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39), and the Apostle reminds us to bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). And so, in truth, in charity, and in peace, we are summoned to build a civilization where no people is cast into shadow, where every human life is honored as a living icon of God, and where the scattered children of the earth may discover once more that they belong to one another.

“May the Lord open our eyes to the wounds of the world, strengthen our hands for the work of justice, and make of us one human family, gathered in truth, sustained by charity, and led along the path of peace.”

¹⁹Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household...(Ephesians 2:19)

Excerpted from the words of His Holiness, Saint Pope John Paul II

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The Evangelical Saint Pope John Paul II

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