Sr. Doreen, SSJD
The theme for United Nations Day 2025 is “United for a Better Future” according to the United Nation web page. Celebrated annually on October 24, United Nations Day commemorates the establishment of the United Nations in 1945. This day is devoted to promoting global unity, international cooperation, and the organization’s work in advancing peace, human rights, and sustainable development.
Today we pray for and ponder deeply the need for a strong and united body of committed countries, all 193 of them and two permanent observers (the Vatican and Palestine): whose mandate might seem to fit the title ‘to dream the impossible dream’. The United Nations theme United for a Better Future: stands for a commitment to promoting global unity, international cooperation, working to advance peace, human rights, and sustainable development. In the reality of today’s world is this ‘to dream the impossible dream’?
When pondering this United Nations Day and its task in today’s broken world that is full of misery and pain, I found myself reading a passage in scripture while asking the same feeling – is it really like dreaming the impossible dream? Acts 4:32 – 35 from the Message Translation reads: “The whole congregation was united as one – one heart, one mind! They didn’t even claim ownership of their possessions. No one said, ‘that’s mind, you can’t have it.’ They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of Jesus, and grace was on all of them. And so, it turned out that a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The Apostles then distributed it according to each person’s need.”
Together with the United Nations theme and mandate, this scripture passage made me say to myself – “well, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could actually live that way! Can we in fact dream the impossible dream and become a community, a world, that mirrors those values? For me and for so many others the answer is a resounding ‘yes’ – it is a powerful and challenging mandate of true community, one that we all long for. For each of us it is a challenge to internalize and personalize the gospel (good) news – those values as articulated in both the United Nations mandate and the Acts passage of scripture that provide a foundation for ongoing reflection about the meaning and activity of a worldwide community. Without this vital hard work reflection, and our belief in Dag Hammarskjold’s famous quote: for all that has been, ‘thanks’, for all that shall be ‘yes’ this mandate becomes overwhelming rather than a challenging possibility.
Many of you will be familiar with a song that was popular in the 1950’s or 1960’s, both Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley sang it to crowds that created real power when sung by a community that really believes that it is their mission.
To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go
To right the un-right able wrong, to love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary, to reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far.
To fight for the right, without question or pause,
To be willing to march, into hell for a heavenly cause.
And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m to my rest
And the world will be better for this.
And one man, sore and covered with scars
To fight the the unbeatable foe, to reach the unreachable star.
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Leigh Mitch/Darion Joseph
The Impossible Dream lyrics © Helena Music Company, Andrew Scott Music
The quote, “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality,” is attributed to John Lennon and Yoko Ono. While it’s often associated with John Lennon, some sources also credit Yoko Ono. It’s a collaborative sentiment reflecting the power of collective action in achieving shared goals. It is in community, our own little communities, and in the community of the world rather than in individual action that our individual dreams and hopes of peace and justice can become a reality. We need each other, more today perhaps than ever before. We need a united nations and a collective vital and viable ‘group’ called the United Nations, one with 80 years of experience, to take us into the future.
I share one of Richard Rohr’s comments from one of his daily meditations to ponder as we remember and pray for the United Nations:
“I would use the word “emancipation” to describe the kinds of freedom and liberation that are needed today. Instead of focusing on personal freedoms only, emancipation directs our attention to a systemic level of freedom. With the exception of a very few who are fully emancipated, we each live inside our own smaller security systems of culture, era, political opinion, and even some quiet, subtle agreements of which we may not even be aware. … Political and economic liberties such as free speech, free markets, and the freedom to be secure and defend ourselves can only offer us as much freedom as we ourselves have earned from the inside [from within ourselves and our choices]. If we haven’t achieved the inner freedom to love, we are totally dependent on outer systems which, paradoxically, can never fully deliver the very freedoms they promise. Our inability to recognize this has made our so-called freedoms very selective, class-based, often dishonest, and open to bias.”
Some of Dome Helder Camara Comments:
* The egoism of the rich presents a more serious problem than Communism.
* Today’s world is threatened by the atom bomb of squalid poverty.
* Profound changes must be made in order to establish justice in every sphere throughout the world.
* Without a deep personal conversion, no one can became an instrument for the conversion of the world…
* To revolutionize the world, the only thing needed is for us to live and to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ with real conviction.
* Dire poverty is revolting and degrading; it taints the image of God in every [human]…
* My door and my heart are open to all – to all without exception.
* Christ has prophesied what will happen at the last judgement: we shall be judge according to the way we have treated him in the persons of the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden.
“Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society”, wrote John Lewis, in his book Across That Bridge.
Mohandas Gandhi wrote: The Seven Social Sins:
Politics without principle; wealth without work; commerce with morality, pleasure without conscience, education without character, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice.
Today we live with a new knowledge and a new responsibility for social justice. We need anti-bodies: proteins that protect us when an unwanted substance enters our body. Produced by our immune system, antibodies bind to these unwanted substances in order to eliminate them from our system. I believe that those antibodies so badly needed today are love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, gentleness, self-control, tenderness, and compassion. With these antibodies we can bind these unwanted substances of brokenness, anger and violence and begin to eliminate them from our world!
May these antibodies be the substance of our deep prayer for the United Nations today, and in all the days to come, along with our commitment to “”Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world,” (Archbishop Desmond Tutu)