Getting to the Point: peace

Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

How Can One Be A Pacifist?

I am doing a tremendous amount of research in Catherine Doherty's writings these days for a project I'm working on (OK, it's my next book, but I'm not able to say what it is yet!). As a result, I come across gems from her now and then that seem worth sharing, so I'll do that from time to time.

This article is from 1970, and of course her specific examples and some of her vocabulary are slightly dated. Don't let that distract you--the woman is saying something here that badly needs saying in our own time and place, with our own issues and problems. She is deep, and is going deep in this article. Enjoy!

The Path to Victory

O Lord, in your strength the king rejoices,

and in your salvation how greatly he exults!

You have given him his heart's desire

and have not withheld the request of his lips.

For you meet him with rich blessings;

you set a crown of fine gold upon his head.

He asked life of you; you gave it to him,

length of days forever and ever.

His glory is great through your salvation;

splendor and majesty you bestow on him.

For you make him most blessed forever;

you make him glad with the joy of your presence.

For the king trusts in the Lord,

and through the steadfast love of the Most High he shall not be moved.

Your hand will find out all your enemies;

your right hand will find out those who hate you…

Be exalted, O Lord, in your strength!

We will sing and praise your power.

Psalm 21: 1-7, 13

Reflection – Today’s instalment in the Monday Psalter may leave us initially a bit flat, a bit unsure what this has to do with us. Most of us are not kings. Most of us are not in battles, at least not the literal kind. Most of us have at best seen a crown of fine gold in a museum, and are not likely to have one set on our heads any time soon.

All this does remind us that the psalms are prayers from a very long time ago (this one undoubtedly dates back to David or Solomon), products of a very different world that may not immediately apply to us. How are we to pray this psalm and make it our own?

Of course our first connection is to go through David and Solomon to Christ. Any ‘king’ reference in the Old Testament should recall to us that we do have a king, that his kingdom is eternal, and that we are his subjects. And this king, in this psalm, is utterly victorious—the verses I omitted for space reasons are all about the total overthrow and humiliation of his enemies, their complete confounding. This is for us supremely a psalm of the resurrection, of the ascension, of the second coming.

But this leads us to a meditation on the nature of his victory, and the nature of ‘victory’ in general. In the original reading of the psalm, there is no question that it is an actual physical battle that is being celebrated, with swords and arrows and shields and all the works of war. The ancient world was a war-like place, violent and brutal—pacifism did not present itself as an option.

Well, without belabouring a rather obvious point to anyone not living under a rock this past week, we still live in a world of violence, where at least some portion of humanity considers the only victory possible to be the slaughtering of its enemies and the taking of vengeance against those who offend it.

This psalm, because we as Christians can only pray it as a meditation on Christ’s victory, invites us to contemplate the ‘battle plan’ of our saviour, the way in which he won the victory which we do believe has been won definitively. It is not by the sword, or the rocket launcher, or the fighter plane, that victory is won in this world—the real victory, the victory over sin and death and hatred and fear.

Christ won the victory by suffering love, by obedience to his Father and by infinite compassion for all human beings, even and perhaps especially those howling for his death. ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!.. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’

As we pass through these difficult days—and I fear there will be more violence, more terror before we are through them—we who are Christians must hold fast to the victory of Christ and how it was won. Love is stronger than death; light is stronger than darkness; Christ is risen from the dead, and the path to that resurrection and life is the path he laid down for us, of humble love and service, of forgiveness and mercy.

I am not a politician, nor a military strategist—if you want analysis along those lines, you’re on the wrong blog. But I know that, whatever else does or does not need to happen in terms of the terrible struggles of our times with violence and terror, the ultimate victory lies in the way of Christ, not the way of war, of mercy and not vengeance. And this psalm, with its jubilant celebration of that victory, bids us to take heart and not be dissuaded from the path he has given us.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Let Nothing Disturb Thee

Let nothing disturb thee,

Let nothing affright thee.

All things are passing,

God never changes.

Patient endurance

Attains all things.

Who possesses God

Wants for nothing.

God alone suffices.

St Teresa of Avila

Reflection – Yesterday’s post about Therese of Lisieux has put me in a Carmelite frame of mind, and so I woke up this morning with this prayer by Teresa of Avila on my mind. It is one I often revert to; I wrote a simple musical setting for it that we do from time to time here at Mass, and it is a prayer that has thus slipped into the collective consciousness of our community.

I have been concerned for some time about the degree of ‘disturbance’ in people these days. I do not live under a rock; I do know, quite well, what is happening in the world, and pay close attention to it, as best one can. There is great violence loose in the world, a spirit of war, as one of my wise brother priests puts it here.

In the face of great evil—beheadings and the like—and of all the lesser evils we encounter as a matter of course (corrupt venal politicians, weak or worldly leaders in the Church, and other sundry nonsense), the great tendency many of us have is to Get Mad, and in that to Get Loud.

The Internet has been the great accelerant of anger and volume in our day, of course. Every one of us who has access to technology has a giant megaphone with which we can trumpet whatever is coming out of our hearts and minds. In the past, only the words of the great and powerful could extend beyond the immediate earshot of the speaker; now, these very words I am typing will be read by someone in India in less than an hour’s time (hi, you know who!).

What this means for all of us is a great responsibility. ‘To whom much has been given, much will be expected.’ If I have been ‘given’ (in the sense that I certainly didn’t invent it), the ability to instantly communicate a message to the entire world, and if I in fact know that by the end of the day a couple hundred people anyhow will have read my writings, then I have to be very careful in choosing my words.

Those who have greater readerships, have greater responsibility yet. And this is where I personally am very concerned—there is just so much anger, so much vitriol, so much name-calling and seething contempt out there. And… I’m talking about the ‘Catholic’ blogosphere here, folks.

There is so much anger and hatred and fierce contempt and violence in the world. Do we really need to pour out from our hearts our own bile and venom and disdain? How does this serve the cause of Christ and the life of the Body of Christ, the Church?

‘Let nothing disturb thee, let nothing affright thee. All things are passing, God never changes. Patient endurance attains all things. Who possesses God wants for nothing. God alone suffices.’ Surely this is to be the starting point for every Christian engagement in the world, isn’t it? And out of this, we can find the right words to talk about Islamic terror, police brutality, the genuinely debased and diseased nature of politics in our countries, the rampaging agendas that threaten religious and civil freedoms, and so forth.

We do have to speak about these matters, and I have, to some degree, done so on this blog. But we have to speak with mercy, with patience, with respect for those who genuinely disagree with us, with respect for the basic human dignity and God-created goodness of those who we believe to be behaving wrongly.

We must never seethe with dripping contempt and vituperous abuse and insult, name-calling and blackguarding and ranting against how very, very lousy… everyone else is.

I, Fr. Denis Lemieux, am a sinner. I am lousy. Who am I to denounce the sin of my brother or sister? But with patient endurance I wait—we all wait—on the God who never changes, and hope to possess Him, and so want nothing. And so it must be in the Christian engagement with evil in the world, or we are just one more angry, violent voice doing nothing to make anything better, and doing quite a bit to make things a lot worse.

Lots of people can spew anger into the internet. We who are Christians are the only ones who can proclaim Christ into the internet. If we don’t, nobody will, and the world will be an angrier, colder, more polarized and hate-filled place. And we will not have to look far to know who is responsible for that.

Let nothing disturb thee. Patient endurance attains all things. God alone suffices.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Answering Hate

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?

Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—

let them be caught in the schemes they have devised…

Their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;

under their tongues are mischief and iniquity.

They sit in ambush in the villages;

in hiding places they murder the innocent.

Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;

they lurk in secret like a lion in its covert;

they lurk that they may seize the poor;

they seize the poor and drag them off in their net…

Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand; do not forget the oppressed.

Why do the wicked renounce God,

and say in their hearts, “You will not call us to account”?

But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief,

that you may take it into your hands;

the helpless commit themselves to you;

you have been the helper of the orphan…

O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek;

you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear

to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,

so that those from earth may strike terror no more.

Psalm 10: 1-2, 7-9, 12-14, 17-18

Reflection – We return to our regular scheduled programming with the Monday Psalter. Psalm 10 is quite a lengthy one, so I have simply given sufficient excerpts to give the gist of it. It seems to me that this psalm is powerfully relevant in our times. There is a spirit of violence at loose in the world, in case you haven’t noticed, a true spirit of war and hatred and savage attack on the innocent and the helpless.

I don’t need to go into all the details of this spirit in the world today—if you aren’t aware of the tragic events unfolding in so many places, you probably aren’t the sort of person who reads my blog, I would venture.

I have been aware, though, of a real danger in the midst of all these situations. It is perhaps one that is perpetual in humanity, confronted with true evil and injustice. Namely, there is real danger of belligerence, rage, vengeance, a meeting of violence with violence, hatred with hatred. ‘You want to kill us? Fine – then we’ll kill you first!’ That kind of thing. Bring it on, baby, and let’s see who has the most guns.

I am not a pacifist, properly speaking. There is a time and a place, there are situations where armed resistance to evil-doers is sadly necessary. And in a sense I am not even thinking of those sorts of situations—we may well have to go to war against ISIS, for example—I truly hope not, but it may come to that.

I am thinking, though, more of a general attitude of bellicosity, a tendency to meet force with force, anger with anger, that it seems to me comes up in many places and situations in the world today, not just geo-political ones. And it seems to me that this is a deep spiritual malady which this psalm addresses.

There are people who hate, true. There are people who are set on courses of action that are genuinely wrong and evil. They may have varying degrees of culpability, but the evil done is real and grave. There may be people who hate me, and who are doing evil to me, and of course that is very hard to deal with.

The great temptation is to meet evil with evil, force with force, violence with violence. Anger for anger, blood for blood. It is the great temptation of humanity, and always has been, and has left our world awash in blood, choked with anger.

Psalm 10 opens for us another door, another path, a path which will only be fully revealed in Jesus Christ. ‘I offered no resistance to those who tore at me… turn the other cheek… Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ This is a very serious call in our days of violence, this season of war in the world. We are Christians; we are called to love our enemies, and this love must be real and incarnated, not some vague meaningless abstraction.

It’s not really about what’s happening in Iraq or Syria or Ukraine, although of course it applies there. It’s about what’s happening at the office or around the supper table, in the neighborhood or the parish, online and offline and in every other line. We are to love, and we are to look to God to show us how the injustices or wrongs of our world are to be healed. The way of violence heals nothing; the way of peace and of love is the hope of the world.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Walking By Starlight

With a hymn composed in the eighth or ninth century, thus for over a thousand years, the Church has greeted Mary, the Mother of God, as “Star of the Sea”: Ave maris stella.

Human life is a journey. Towards what destination? How do we find the way? Life is like a voyage on the sea of history, often dark and stormy, a voyage in which we watch for the stars that indicate the route. The true stars of our life are the people who have lived good lives. They are lights of hope.

Certainly, Jesus Christ is the true light, the sun that has risen above all the shadows of history. But to reach him we also need lights close by—people who shine with his light and so guide us along our way. Who more than Mary could be a star of hope for us? With her “yes” she opened the door of our world to God himself; she became the living Ark of the Covenant, in whom God took flesh, became one of us, and pitched his tent among us (cf. Jn 1:14).

Spe Salvi 49

Reflection – With this entry I will have now successfully blogged the entire encyclical Spe Salvi, on the salvific nature of hope. I’ve taken this last week or so to revisit and finish my blogging on this encyclical because it seemed timely. The world is in some very difficult and sad times—yesterday’s second beheading of an American journalist is one more movement towards what seems almost certainly a renewed military engagement in Iraq, and of course that is only one small corner of the world that is in great turmoil and distress—Eastern Europe and Western Africa are in sore need of prayer and aid now, too.

The sea of history is indeed ‘dark and stormy’ and it is all too easy to lose sight of the destination of the journey in these times. The passions—anger and avarice, gluttony and lust, despondency and sloth, pride and vainglory—all too easily beckon us when the world is in turmoil. They seem to offer us a way through these dark stormy waters, but to what end?

We can strike out against our enemies in anger, tightly cling to our own wealth, drown ourselves in physical pleasures, collapse into despair, or exert our mastery to put everyone else underneath us—but to what final end? What good is it, indeed, to gain the whole world and lose one’s soul?

And so we have the stars of hope, the light shed by the saints in glory, and above all by the great Mother of God who lights the path to the true end of humanity. It is so crucial in these days when the world does seem to be blowing up just a bit (and, we’ll see, perhaps quite a lot), to know that this world and our life in this world, good and precious as it is, is not the destination of the journey, not our ultimate home.

‘The true stars of our lives are people who have led good lives.’ What a lovely and simple sentence to explain the devotion to the saints which has been part of the life of the Church since its very beginning. This is why it is so important to read the saints and know something of their lives, the choices they made, the sufferings they endured, and what it was all about for them. So many genuinely foolish mistakes about Christianity and what it means to live as a Christian in the world would be avoided if we would let ourselves be taught by our betters, the men and women who have done this thing, lived this life, and whose lives serve as brilliant guides to us along the ways of the world.

Mary is supreme among the saints. She shows us that, no matter what the circumstances of our lives, no matter what is going on around us, inside us, in our world and in our own little worlds, the road to the good end of life is the road of fiat, of faith, of humble obedience to God. That the whole purpose of God in creation and in humanity is to make of us an open door for Himself to enter in, that the world’s salvation and ours does not come through human power and mastery, not by violence and not by sensuality, but through the work of God transforming our flesh into His, our lives into His, our humanity into His divinity, as His Spirit overshadows us as it did Her.

Our Lady is the star shining brightly in all the world showing us that this is the path of life and that it leads to a brilliant and glorious end. I don’t know what the great political and (possibly) military solutions are to the very real problems we are facing in the world today. I do know that we haven’t a chance of finding our way through these times if each of us personally does not set our course by the stars of hope the Lord has laid out in the heavens for us, and that the true way of peace in the world comes only through walking the path God opened up for us and that Our Lady reveals to us in its fullness and its beauty.