What a beautiful message to share not only for this season but forever. Especially to those affected by wars and conflicts, disasters as well, we wish them all peace, God's peace and love.
For all those in grief and pain, we wish peace and comfort for them all. May God's soothing presence provide them their much-needed embrace and rest they so badly need, especially amidst this festive season.
For those hungry, homeless, and without jobs, we wish for them the gift of sufficiency or better still, of abundance from now on. We include here the battered, the abandoned, the invisible, and excluded.
If only love and peace truly reigned in everyone's hearts, then all will be well with people and our earth. We wish for true peace and love to touch and stay in everyone's heart from this season and forever.
Hiroya Takamatsu, a graduating student of Toyo University, is completing a thesis about peace, a topic he has been trying to understand since his childhood days in Hokkaido, Japan. He wondered why Japan was involved in World War II. He wondered, through his stay as an exchange student in UP Cebu and UP Diliman why many Filipinos still remember the war.
His research introduced him to Johann Galtung and his oft-quoted initial definition in the early 60s. Peace is the absence of war.
Events after World War II till now have challenged that initial definition. Even without war, the hungry, the homeless, the jobless are without peace. Even without war, misunderstanding, prejudice, and discrimination replace and negate peace throughout the hearts of people, across nations, and throughout this present, highly complex world.
Peace is, therefore, not simply direct peace translated as the absence of peace. Structural and cultural peace are two other types of peace. Aside from various types, peace also operates on various levels: personal, national, and global.
So many keywords are associated with peace: security, survival, sufficiency of basic needs, harmony, equality, and the list can go on and on. The increasing number of key words associated with peace confirm that peace is not only multilevel — peace is also multidimensional, a reflection of humanity's complexity and diversity.
Peace is an elusive concept that cannot be captured by a singular, all embracing definition. The academic search about peace is marching on in rhythm with the quest for real peace to reign in the hearts and lives of people, nations, and the whole world.
Peace is not only to be studied. Peace needs to be actualized — to be owned, practiced, and shared with all.
Peace is also never just a personal quest or initiative. Peace on earth requires all on earth to understand, to possess, to share, and to collaborate with each other so that not only peace but goodwill to all will be a reality in our world.
Peace I give you, My peace I give you.
This peace inseparable from love for God , for self , and for our neighbors, for others is the peace we wish to share with you all always.
Again, peace be with you all, this Christmas season and forever. Love be with you all too, this Christmas and through all the years.