We live in a time when tensions, conflicts, and messages of hatred seem to be multiplying everywhere: on social media, at work, in politics and even within families. Globally, armed conflicts are reaching levels unseen in decades. This situation reminds us that peace is never guaranteed but must be cultivated daily.
In the light of this, Chiara Lubich’s words from 2004 are still very relevant today: “Every nation and every person has a deep longing for peace, harmony and unity. But despite our efforts
and goodwill, after thousands of years of history, we find ourselves unable to maintain stable, lasting peace (…) because peace is not only the absence of war, struggles, divisions, and traumas.” True peace is “fullness of life and joy; it is the integral salvation of the person; it is freedom; it is justice and fraternity in love among all peoples.”
Working for peace requires taking action and initiative, sometimes creatively. Each of us has the potential to become a “peacemaker” by promoting harmony and collaboration in the small things of everyday life and by joining global initiatives that foster cooperation.
Some concrete examples are significant.
The Living Peace project began with a personal desire to promote peace and then evolved into an extensive peace education programme. Currently, over 2,600 schools adhere to this project and two million children, young peopleand adults from five continents are involved in its the initiatives . Among these is the “peace dice,” which has phrases written on each face that help build peaceful relationships and that everyone tries to put into practice.
Recently, in a webinar entitled “Forgiveness and Peace: the Courage to Make DifficultDecisions,” the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation in being peacemakers and rebuilding what had been broken was highlighted.
Finally, another example is the Rondine Method: an open-air workshop that enables people to move beyond the resoning that regards others as the enemy. Israelis and Palestinians, Serbs and Bosnians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis but also Malians, Nigerians, and Colombians, and most recently Russians and Ukrainians, have built a viable way to repair relationships destroyed by hatred and build solid bonds in favour of peace. Over the last thirty years, many young people have visited “Citadel Peace”, a small medieval village on the outskirts of Arezzo. Some of these people are now politicians, ambassadors, business men or women and young leaders who are dedicating their lives to healing the wounds of those painful conflicts and laying the foundations for a future that combines peaceful relations and development.
To live this idea, let us resolve to sow seeds of peace wherever we are by ceating relationships of trust, solidarity, and cooperation, because every step toward peace makes us more fully human and brings the whole of society closer to a future of justice and fraternity.

Photo: © Livingpeaceinternational.org

THE IDEA OF THE MONTH is currently produced by the Focolare Movement’s “Centre for Dialogue with People of Non religious Beliefs”. It is an initiative that began in 2014 in Uruguay to share with non-believing friends the values of the Word of Life, i.e. the phrase from Scripture that members of the Movement strive to put into practice in their daily lives. Currently, THE IDEA OF THE MONTH is translated into 12 languages and distributed in more than 25 countries, with adaptations of the text according to different cultural sensitivities. www. dialogue4unity.focolare.org