The Second Sunday of Ordinary Time - 19 January 2020 - is the day set aside for Peace Sunday in England and Wales.
Pax Christi, the International Catholic movement for peace, provides resources to amplify the World Peace Day message of Pope Francis, supporting parishes to celebrate and re-energise the work of peace.
The Pope’s message was released to mark the Church’s World Day of Prayer for Peace that is celebrated on New Year’s Day every year.
All our parishes have received a liturgical booklet from Pax Christi along with a letter from its National President, the Archbishop of Liverpool, the Most Reverend Malcolm McMahon OP. Archbishop McMahon encourages us to celebrate Peace Sunday and asks parishes to consider having a collection for, or making a donation to, Pax Christi. The peace movement is not a charity hence it relies on financial support to continue its work for peace in the year ahead.
The theme for 2020 is ‘Peace as a Journey of Hope: Dialogue, Reconciliation and Ecological Conversion’.
New resources to support Peace Sunday can be downloaded from Pax Christi’s website.
In his World Peace Day message for 2020, Pope Francis speaks wise words challenging us to dialogue and renewed relationships of reconciliation, communal solidarity and hope in the future.
He reminds the world that “peace and international stability are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction or the threat of total annihilation.”
Pax Christi is committed to non-violence and is committed to the Pope’s challenge to “set aside every act of violence in thought, word and deed, whether against our neighbours or against God’s creation.”
O God of peace, who are peace itself
and whom a spirit of discord
cannot grasp,
nor a violent mind receive,
grant that those who are one in heart
may persevere in what is good
and that those in conflict
may forget evil and so be healed.
Roman Missal
To mark the day, the Church is promoting a time of universal prayer.
October sees a national rosary mission titled ‘Rosary Whirlwind British Isles’.
