30th Sunday 2025
Sirach 35:15-17, 20-22; 2Tim 4;6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14
I am going to confuse you even more than usual this week, as I am going to focus less on the Gospel than on the First Reading. The latter is taken from the Book of Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, a title with which you may be more familiar. My reason is that Sirach is writing primarily about justice which, incidentally, features also in Our Lord’s explanation of the Gospel parable.
Bishop Swarbrick’s (the Bishop of Lancaster) motto is borrowed from St. John Henry Newman, and reads in English “Holiness before peace:” in other words, “Let me be concerned with doing God’s will, rather than with being comfortable”. I would propose an appendix to the Bishop’s motto, which would read “Justice before peace”.
Peace is a weasel word, covering a multitude of sins. When people talk about or pray for peace, they are sometimes asking simply to be left alone, not to be disturbed. We do not like to be disturbed, but sometimes it is necessary. From time to time, the status quo needs to be challenged, in our own lives, in the Church, in the world.
I suspect that not many of you will have read Tacitus’s “Agricola” recently, though, for all I know, it may be discussed endlessly in Warton, the Yealands, Carnforth, and Silverdale. I have never read it from choice, but it was a set book for Latin A-level in 1967, so I had to study it avidly at that time. You may be aware that “agricola” is the Latin word for farmer, but in this case it is a man’s name. Cnaeus Julius Agricola was the Roman Governor of Britain for six years during the First Century AD, and his career was described by Tacitus, his son-in-law.
One quotation from the book sticks in my mind: “They make a desert and call it peace”—“solitudinem faciunt et pacem appellant”. It is put by the author into the mouth of a British chieftain, who is denouncing the Pax Romana, the “Roman peace” which the conquering Romans claim to have established throughout their Empire. This chieftain claims that what the Romans call peace is actually subjugation.
A genuine approach to peace was spelt out by Pope St Paul VI in his 1975 exhortation “Evangelii nuntiandi”. The Pope wrote “If you want peace, work for justice,” insisting, like that Briton long ago, that peace without justice is no peace at all.
Let us look around our contemporary world. Politicians are speaking about peace in Israel/Palestine. What we have is a temporary ceasefire, which has already been violated. Even if it holds, can we really speak in terms of peace when Hamas, whose murderous raid two years ago was evil beyond words, seeks the destruction of Israel? When Israel, having reduced Gaza to ruins, reserves the right to bomb and shell indiscriminately what remains? When ethnic cleansing continues unchecked on the West Bank of the River Jordan?
What about Ukraine? (Not THE Ukraine, by the way, which Ukrainians themselves reject as being a description of their former status as a puppet state under Russian control.) If the guns fall silent now, if the drones and missiles stop wreaking havoc, will that be peace, while Russia holds swathes of Ukrainian territory, where it is imposing Russian language and culture, and delivering a Russian version of recent history? “They make a desert, and call it peace.” “If you want peace, work for justice.”
In our own country, does justice hold sway in all aspects of society? If not, can we truly speak of peace? What can you and I do? Let us pray always for “peace founded on justice”, or for “a just and lasting peace”, for without justice, there can be no peace. Let us pester politicians to seek justice for all people at home and abroad; let us not be selfish when we vote, but rather seek to establish just government; though it isn’t easy, at present, to establish which party, if any, will achieve or even desire that; let us make sure that we ourselves always act justly, and that we put holiness before the comfort of an illusory peace.
