Pro-life Mass (Peace & Justice) January 15, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” What, I wonder, do you imagine when I describe a person as a “peacemaker?” Someone who gets along with everyone? St. James the Apostle in our second reading describes wisdom as “pure, peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits.” So, yeah, gentleness, compliance, and mercy are all connected to peace and making peace. But St. James also says that peace has to be connected to righteousness.
Then Isaiah the prophet says, “there is no peace for the wicked!” with exclamation mark. The psalm prays for “peace, til the moon be no more,” while at the same time praying that the king govern with justice. Pope St. Paul VI once told the world, “if you want peace, work for justice.” Jesus calls peacemakers blessed, but he also teaches that if we work for justice and righteousness, we will be persecuted… insulted and slandered and hated. Does being persecuted sound peaceful to you?
Well no, not if you define peace as just “getting along” with everyone. But that’s just it; that’s not what peace means because that’s not how human nature works. Ask anyone who has been married for longer than 5 years if always avoiding fights makes them feel peaceful. Ask the victim of a crime if letting the criminal get away with it is peaceful. The simple fact is that human beings don’t just want to avoid fights, they want to receive love. We can try to stuff down resentments, to cover over our wounds, to bottle up our anger and indignation at being unfairly treated, but it won’t work. It won’t bring peace.
The simple fact is that this world is not peaceful. It is conflicted, it is broken, it is unjust. No matter what you do in this life, that injustice and conflict and brokenness is going to claim territory somewhere. That somewhere can either be inside your own heart or outside it. If you just pretend to be peaceful, if you just avoid conflict and turn a blind eye to injustice, then it will reign in your own heart. But if choose to confront injustice, you can actually make peace first in your own heart and then, by extension, in the hearts of others who are willing to join you in seeking justice and righteousness.
So no, making peace is not avoiding conflict. The only way, the only way to make peace is choosing the right conflict. It is fighting the right battles in the right way for the right reason. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of situations where the battle you fight is against your own anger. Hold your tongue, turn the other cheek, and respond to hatred with love. But that’s not the same thing as going along with evil to avoid trouble. We fight evil with love, mercy, and kindness, but we do fight.
Peacemakers do not get along with everyone. Peacemakers are often seen as annoying and troublesome. To people in power, peacemakers are often seen as an obstacle. They want to abuse their power for selfish reasons, but peacemakers want justice. They want that power used correctly so that people aren’t victimized and hurt and full of resentment. The greatest peacemaker ever was Jesus himself and what did the people in power do to him? Crucified him.
So why be a peacemaker if it could hurt so much? “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Do you get how incredible that is? We’re told that we’re children of God so often that it dulls our awareness of how utterly astounding that promise is.
Imagine that you grow up an orphan. You have no mom or dad. Then one day, someone comes along with a DNA test that shows you are the son or daughter of the world’s first trillionaire. That trillionaire then takes you into their super awesome home, lets you play with all the super-advanced technology they own, and prepares you to take over the most successful business in all of history. Or the DNA test shows that you’re the son or daughter of the king of a super-powerful country, so they take you in and let you rule with them. Not only do you now have a loving mom and dad, you are also insanely rich and powerful.
Well, that is nothing compared to being God’s son or daughter. Trillionaire? Psht, God is infinite and owns the whole universe! A king? Hah, God is all-powerful. A loving parent? Come on, God is love itself, there’s no one more loving. Being a peacemaker isn’t just a nice thing to do, it’s the doorway to perfect and eternal happiness.
If you are baptized, you are already a child of God and that can never go away. But if you want to be called a child of God, to be recognized as a child of God, if you want to actually live as a child of God on earth and for all eternity, you have to be a peacemaker. And if you want to be a peacemaker, you have to work for justice.
And what is justice? Justice is giving to others what is due to them, what is owed to them. We owe God everything, so it is justice to worship him, praise him, thank him, and walk in a lifelong relationship with him. Other people are made in God’s image, so it is justice to treat them with respect and to honor their dignity, even when they are bad people. It is also justice to punish criminals. It is justice to challenge our loved ones to be good, to push them to live up to their potential. We’re supposed to become virtuous and holy… we are owed the opportunity to do so and sometimes the only way we get that opportunity is when someone refuses to let us get away with sloth or laziness or pride.
All of that matters when we talk about fighting for the right to life, which is the goal of our Mass today. Thanks be to God abortion is now illegal in this state. Human beings are owed the right to life, it is justice for us to protect that and if we want peace, we can’t just pretend that protecting life is not our problem. If we don’t seek justice for the unborn, then we will not find peace for those who are born. And we’re not done seeking that justice! There are places in our country that still lack protection for the right to life. There are powerful forces in our country who tell us “just let people do what they want! You’re causing so much conflict by trying to ban abortion and euthanasia! It would be more peaceful if you just kept to yourselves and let people do those things!” They are wrong.
It is not peace to let people take innocent life. It is also not peace to let people who take innocent life act as if nothing is wrong with they do. We owe it in justice to protect the innocent when we can. We also owe it in justice to murderers to point out the evil of what they do. We don’t just want to make peace for ourselves. We don’t just want to make peace for babies, the elderly, and the disabled. We also want to make peace for the people living wicked lives. “There is no peace for the wicked!” says the prophet Isaiah. Even if the wicked person does not know they are wicked, even if they think they are doing good, even when they think they are being compassionate when they take innocent lives, they will not find peace. But us? We want to be peacemakers. We want to make peace for their victims and for them.
So we’ll work for justice and protect their victims. We’ll work for justice to expose their wickedness. Even if they don’t want the truth, even they don’t want to receive the peace that comes from repentance, even if they persecute and slander and kill us for trying to offer them the peace that God alone can give, we’ll do it anyway.
Why? Because we already are children of God and peacemaking is what we do.