To mark the 800th anniversary of the first recorded mention of the name Okić, a solemn Mass was celebrated in front of the Church of St Mary of Okić, presided over by the Archbishop of Zagreb, Cardinal Franjo Kuharić. On that occasion he delivered a sermon, which we reproduce here.
"Dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ!
Two things must come together: God and the soul; God and Man. In communion with God, man becomes truly human. In the fullness of a conscience that chooses truth, goodness, justice and love — that is what ultimately fulfils man's humanity. If there is no humanity, what are we left with? We are left with war. And what is this war? It has come from inhumanity, from hatred; not only from the greed to seize what belongs to others, to snatch and claim what is not one's own, to expand one's territory, but from an even deeper source: hatred. It is this hatred that so savagely destroys and scatters peaceful Croatian villages; this hatred that so savagely lays waste to a great part of Croatian towns. This is hatred: to demolish hospitals, churches, factories; to leave thousands upon thousands of workers without bread — that is hatred! To destroy homes, to burn houses — that is hatred! Why? What is it that is lacking in man?
Brothers and sisters, evil is present within man, and so it is from the human heart, as Jesus tells us, that all evils flow. That is why Jesus Christ came into the world; he entered history, born as a child of the Blessed Virgin Mary on that night in Bethlehem, to save man, to set him free within himself, and to teach him the greatest knowledge and the greatest wisdom — the commandment of love. Where there is no love, hatred remains. Where hatred remains, injustice remains; and lies; and violence. That is the unholy trinity: lies, hatred and murder.
Eight hundred years ago, too, man was threatened by man. It was a time of violence, yet we must acknowledge that it was also a time of Christian civilisation, and as such it guided consciences. Man had still not matured enough to refrain from attacking others, to live in peace, or to guarantee freedom to all, to every human being. Man does not improve of his own accord. Despite electronics, journeys to the Moon, television and radio, and the general surge of technology, so many crimes are still committed among men, and the destruction is even more terrible, because man now possesses the technology of devastation — and so we live in a civilisation of hatred, weapons and war. It would never have come to this had man not fallen morally and had he not rejected the source of life revealed in the Resurrection.
And Jesus said: Love your neighbour as yourself! So if you love yourself, and wish good things for yourself, and wish peace for yourself, then you must wish the same for others. You cannot wish peace for yourself and drive millions of others into cellars under a hail of bombs! You cannot wish for peaceful work for yourself and leave thousands of workers without employment by destroying their factories! You cannot wish security for yourself and cast entire towns and villages into insecurity with your bombs and shells! Love of neighbour is as fundamental a law as love of God. Without love of God, there can be no complete, utterly selfless love of neighbour. Without love, a man grows within himself into a monster who will sacrifice multitudes for his own interest.
Our law, therefore, is love. We preach love even to our defenders. They do not defend the homeland out of hatred. They must not hate! They do not defend the homeland with a spirit of vengeance. They defend the homeland out of love. They give their lives out of love for their country, their home, their family. We therefore call upon our defenders, our people, not to fall into the temptation of hatred, not to fall into the temptation of revenge, not to return evil for evil, but to be victors who overcome evil with justice, goodness and peace. Allow me to repeat what I said before thousands of pilgrims on the feast of the Assumption at Marija Bistrica in 1991, and what I also said in Petrinja on the feast of St Lawrence on 10 August 1991, a short time before Petrinja fell, for terrorism had already erupted into war by then! Even at that moment one could foresee disaster, destruction and death. What I said then, I shall say again now:
If my adversary has burned my house, I will not set fire to his! If he has destroyed my church, I will not touch his — on the contrary, I will protect it. If he has abandoned his home, I will not take so much as a pin from it! If he has killed my father, my brother, my sister, I will not repay him in kind, but will respect the life of his father, his brother, his son, his sister! This is the Gospel — perhaps difficult to comprehend for a man who has been trampled upon and humiliated, for a people who have been trampled upon and humiliated — but this Gospel is the pledge of victory. These must be our principles. These must be our actions, for otherwise we too would fall victim to the Dragon! Conversion, prayer and fasting are the most powerful weapons in the struggle against the Dragon! To love truth, to do good, to practise justice — these are the laws of God's world, in which there is no place for the Dragon. And this is the world we want: a world of peace and freedom! For such peace we pray. May God conquer the Dragon in every soul and every conscience, so that people may be people of peace and not of war!
We believe in God. Therefore we also believe in love — that it is strong enough to love even one's enemy. And we do love! We love our enemies. Let no one think, if they try to justify this war by claiming to defend their Serbian people, that we do not love the Serbian people. We love them more than those men do. Had they truly loved them, they would not have burdened them with the responsibility for a war of aggression. We wish to belong to the Kingdom of God; we wish to bear the Kingdom of God within us, and so we believe in the victory of love. We say this always and emphatically. We must be unconquerable: unconquerable in faith, unconquerable in hope, and unconquerable in love. That is the Kingdom of God. And so, in this terrible war in which a dark hatred has been unleashed, love will have its triumph.
Where justice must be done, a law-governed state has just courts, which must prove to each individual — not to a community, not to a whole people — that he is guilty, that he has done wrong. But no one, absolutely no one, has the right to take justice into their own hands and pass judgement, for that would be the exercise of injustice, the exercise of violence. I call upon all Croatian Catholic families to pray daily that in this war imposed upon us, truth and justice may prevail, for faith is necessary if life is to be achieved and if peace is to be achieved.
Grateful to our defenders and to our police for protecting man and his rights, I entrust everything to God's protection through the intercession of the Immaculate Mother of God, that she may pray for us, that Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, may grant lasting, secure and just peace in our beautiful homeland!"
