At the start of the new year, the desire for some resolution to the problem of violence in our land must, surely, be at the top of everyone's wish-list. Peace, an end to kidnappings and murders are prayers on the lips of our children who can read and understand, and have an awareness of the climate around them.

This is so not only because the country has seen an appalling rate of murders and kidnappings, but because the human spirit aspires to true and lasting peace, security and freedom.

In his January 1 message marking the World Day of Peace, Pope Benedict XVI writes: "Peace is an irrepressible yearning present in the heart of each person, regardless of his or her particular cultural identity."

The heart hopes, and even expects.

It is because of this hope and expectation that, in the midst of unbridled crime, citizens who could make their home elsewhere stay here; that professionals give up more lucrative jobs abroad to stay at home to serve the people of Trinidad and Tobago; that members of the business community dig their roots even deeper offering the public new opportunities of employment. There is the expectation that change will come.

But, hope and expectation, gifts of God, can be stymied; people can be alienated.

It should not be assumed that the hope present now, somehow, will be naturally sustained in the future. Neither should we believe that the relative peace we have enjoyed in the past was as a matter of course.

Gestures of peace

The new year should cause us to reflect even more deeply about the things that make for peace; to consider, in the words of Pope John Paul II, what will promote a "culture of peace".

The late pope, revisiting the encyclical Pacem in Terris on January 1, 2003 , said: "Religion has a vital role in fostering gestures of peace and in consolidating conditions for peace."

On this the first day of the year, we salute the many Church-based agencies which without fanfare have continued to work towards a "culture of peace".

The Society of St Vincent de Paul, with its ministry of visitation and advocacy for the poor, has been caring for the sick, the homeless, the aged, the children for almost 150 years. The Society and other agencies which do similar work provide important pathways to peace, and are in themselves "gestures of peace."

In 2006, government can further its work for peace by working more closely with these agencies and deepening the processes and structures that have been successfully adopted by many of them.

The first day of a new year in human history is also the day in the Church's calendar devoted to honouring Mary as Mother of God. The peace that we seek cannot be arrived at outside of God. Mary's Son, the Prince of Peace leads us.

The Church offers Mary, who was subjected to unsettling experiences and "pondered them in her heart" (Lk 2:20 ) as a model for all peoples.

The willingness to seek God's wisdom and prayer that is incessant are crucial aids to true peace in our land.