“Arms and wars are, in a word, to be excluded from civilization’s programmes . . . As the prophet Isaiah said, “. . . they will hammer their swords into ploughshares, their spears into sickles ” (Is 2:4). And then let us listen to the word of Christ: “Put your sword back, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Mt 26:52). Is this utopia? For how much longer?”
- Pope Paul VI (World Day of Peace Message 1976)
Sin is real. But so is grace. Does your grace-filled “programme” for life exclude arms and wars? If not, why not? If not, when?
Grace and peace be with you all.
It is near impossible to deny the reality of sin, but how few recognize the reality of grace! How few of those who recognize actually rely upon and hope in it.
Only in grace can we achieve peace.
I just stumbled across this beautiful passage in Terry Eagleton’s new book, “Trouble with Strangers”, that is related enough (albeit, loosely) to share (substitute feeders and clothers with peacemakers):
The Yahweh of the Old testament proclaims that his people shall know him for who he is when they welcome the immigrants, care for the destitute and protect the poor from the violence of the rich.
There is a carnivalesque quality about a faith for which the whole cosmos is at stake in the gift of a cup of water. The Son of man sweeps majestically down on clouds of glory only to inquire whether you have visited the sick and fed the hungry. Conventional Messiahs tend to make their entrance into the national capital in bullet-proof limousines with police outriders, not on a donkey. Jesus is presented as a sick joke of a Savior. Yet the Christian gospel sees in such humdrum activity as clothing the naked the foretaste of the transfiguration of the earth, one which is folly to the French. The exceptional and the everyday are not divided domains, as they are for the disciples of Lacan. The material world is the locus of redemption. As Graham Pechey writes, behinf moern writings ‘junking of the classical “separation of styles” and its discovery of the serious and the tragic in the everyday was a run-of-the mill police action in Roman Judaea whivjh has shaken the world.’
Nate,
By the way, I hope your high school classes are going well.
I confess that my first year of teaching was as a 25 year old religion instuctor ( with no training in education) teaching 9th and 12 graders at and all girls’ Catholic high school and it was by far the most humbling experience of my life.
I was quite good with the Socratic method but bloody awful with discipline. My classes would quite periodically erupt, but over excitement about the subject matter only a few times.
test
If not, why not? My “programme” for life does not exclude arms and wars because the language of sin includes them; and when one needs to step before sin’s word, not as a balast but as a barracade against further evil, then, at times, I need to speak that same language.
Admonishing the sinner is sometimes a toungue lashing. But it can include a besting in battle, particularly when, as St. Augustine has said, hope’s two daughers, anger and courage, require me to set aside a fear of personal health in the hopes of correcting or, better, preventing an unspeakable evil.
I hope, with many, that charity will convince, kindness will asuage, purity of heart will win over the hardest of sinners bent on evil…but time and circumstances do and have required more than toungue lashings. Sometimes they have required St. Louis de Montfort’s forceful reminder to shut up, listen, and pray to Our Lady. And I have no doubt with Our Lord, with Pope Paul, and with Isaiah that at the end of time peace will come. But until then, this spiritual semite will hold on to his sword so as to defend himself.
so as to defend himself
Because you are more important than your brother, who may for the time being also be your enemy?
Love conquers all.
No not because I am more important than my brother, but because justice is more important than both of us. Indeed I am demonstrating, by willing to lay my life down in war, that I am NOT more important than my brother, for my life has little meaning if I can choose to sit idly by while the horror of injustice continues or if I have a chance to stop it from taking place.
Macphisto, you said, “at the end of time peace will come. But until then, this spiritual semite will hold on to his sword so as to defend himself.” How do you reconcile your belief that peace can only come at the end of time with the teachings of our Church, which teaches that peace is possible in our world?
You also said, “My “programme” for life does not exclude arms and wars because the language of sin includes them.” But what about the language of grace?