The Three Kings have arrived in Judah from the East. We know the story well enough. The visit of the Wise Men to the Child Jesus, to Mary and Joseph, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, the wicked King Herod and his attempt to kill the new-born king, the Slaughter of the Innocents all hold a firm place in our imagination. To find the deeper meaning of the Gospel passage, we look to Paul.

Ephesus was a Greek city in Asia Minor, now Turkey. By the time Paul was writing today's letter, again from jail in Rome, the majority of Christians were Gentiles, as they were in Ephesus. The earliest Christian communities were Jewish. Jesus' mission was to the lost sheep of Israel, after all. It was only after Jesus' death and Resurrection and the Descent of the Holy Spirit that God's eternal plan was made clear to the Apostles, and not all at once either.

They were Jews, and there was a strong tendency among the Jews to keep to themselves, to look inward to their own community of faith. That was the only way, they were convinced, that they could keep their faith in the One God true and their worship pure. Their own history had made that clear to them. On the other hand, there was a strong contrary impulse in Judaism, to go out, to be a light of revelation to the Nations, the Gentiles. We hear it in today's reading from Isaiah and all through the Book of Isaiah. In the Second Chapter of Isaiah we read that all the nations will climb the mountain of the Lord, Sion, to learn His ways of justice and of peace. They will beat their swords into ploughshares, their swords into pruning hooks, and they shall study war no more, the promise, the Messianic vision of universal peace.

Look at Paul's words again. "God's secret plan from all eternity is this: In Christ Jesus the Gentiles are now co-heirs with the Jews, members of the same body and sharers of the promise through the preaching of the Gospel." A few years after Paul's martyrdom, Jewish zealots staged an insurrection against Rome. Rome cracked down hard, destroyed the Temple, razed the City and expelled the Jews from Jerusalem. The rabbis had to invent a new way to practice the Jewish religion without the Temple, and when they did so, they decided that the Christians could not participate. If they had not made that choice, we might all be meeting in a synagogue today, St. Mary's Synagogue! As it is, we believe that we have been grafted onto the People of Israel and their sacred books, the Old Testament, are our sacred books, along with our New Testament. We are theirs, along with the Jews, of the Prophets.

The prophets of Israel spoke for justice in God's own name. Go back to the first chapter of Isaiah and you will read some startling words about religion itself. The Lord tells His people that their sacrifices are a stench in His nostrils. Take them away, He says. I want justice. Do justice, and then bring your burnt offerings. Amos sums up all the prophets in one verse: "Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God." This has to be the core of our own religion as well. James tells us that true religion is this: to care for widows and orphans, that is the poor and the weak, and to keep ourselves unspotted by the world, that is free from the lust for power and privilege.

Pope Paul VI, thirty-five years ago, declared the first day of January to be a day of prayer for world peace. John Paul II has issued a long address for World Peace Day this year. Inevitably, it had to reflect the terrible events of September 11. Here are some of the things the Holy Father said.

Throughout his address, the Holy Father repeats, several times, "No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness."

"How can we speak of justice and forgiveness as the source and condition of peace? We can and we must, no matter how difficult this may be.... Forgiveness is the opposite of resentment and revenge, not of justice. In fact, true peace is 'the work of justice'.... No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness: this is what I wish to say... to all men and women of good will who are concerned for the good of the human family and for its future."

Human justice, the Holy Father holds, is imperfect, and so it must be tempered with forgiveness. "In order to be complete, certain and irreversible" the Pope explains, "justice must be raised to the perfection of forgiveness."

Don't take the John Paul for a soft-headed sentimentalist when he says such things. This is a man who had to contend with Nazis who occupied his country, and with Communists for decades after the war, and always came out on top. This is a man who has looked into the face of evil, nearly killed by an assassin's bullet in Saint Peter's Square. No softy. To forgive is not to forget. Those who threaten the innocent must be dealt with effectively, because the first duty of society is to protect the innocent, but most definitely, not by killing other innocents.

Justice must be served, but never in the spirit of vengeance and hatred against offenders. "May the light of our prayers extend even to those who gravely offend God by pitiless acts, that they may look into their hearts, see the evil of what they do, abandon all violent intentions and seek forgiveness."

John Paul anticipates that many will find his teaching hard. He explains: "Forgiveness, in fact, always involves an apparent short-term loss for a real long-term gain. Violence is the exact opposite; opting as it does for an apparent short-term gain, it involves a real and permanent loss. Forgiveness may seem like weakness, but it demands great spiritual strength and moral courage, both in granting it and in accepting it.... My ministry at the service of the Gospel obliges me, and at the same time gives me the strength, to insist upon the necessity of forgiveness. I do so again today in the hope of stirring serious and mature thinking on this theme, with a view to a far-reaching resurgence of the human spirit in individual hearts and in relations between the peoples of the world."

The Pope speaks of prayer as not something added on, an afterthought, as if, "all we can do is pray." The only thing we absolutely must do is pray. Otherwise whatever we do won't be in the right spirit and it won't bring us to genuine justice or to peace.... Then John Paul turns again to forgiveness. "In individual hearts."

That's where it starts, in prayer. That's where God speaks to us in our inner sanctuary, our deepest conscience. God never speaks words of violence, vengeance and hate. Never! If prayer forms our consciousness, it will inform our actions as well. What we do has an effect far beyond ourselves. It is like the pebble in the pond. Not a word ever uttered has been entirely lost in the vastness of the universe. It's true. Everything we say and do and even think has a reverberation that is endless. Each act of anger, hatred, vengeance poisons the world. Each act of compassion builds the mountain of the Lord.

That's why we sing, "Let peace begin with me."

Each one of us has a part to play in bringing all the nations to the mountain of the Lord, where Jesus will be seen to be Lord of history, Savior of all in the peace that was meant to be. Evil seems so massive, especially in our own day. But evil cannot win out in the end. Jesus has overcome. Good will prevail over evil. We have the Promise, the Promise made to the Jews, which we now share because of the one who forgave.

That's the message of an old and palsied wise man of today in Rome, the foremost teacher of nonviolence in the world today. We should be so grateful to him, and to God for giving us such a man. Peace is possible.

We have the Promise. He has overcome. We shall overcome.

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