God does not give us graces or talents or virtues for ourselves alone. We are members one of another and everything that is given to one member is given for the whole body… In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart. As soon as you take yourself seriously and imagine that your virtues are important because they are yours, you become the prisoner of your own vanity…. (New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 42, 43)
When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable. — Thomas Merton (New Seeds of Contemplation, p.121)
Verse of the day
But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.
– Exodus 1:17
Voice of the day
Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.
– Arundhati Roy
Prayer of the day
May we, like the midwives of Egypt, fear you more than empire, and in holy defiance choose life over violence, resistance over complicity, and peace over war.
“But once we become aware of the generous, creative presence that exists in all things natural, we can receive it as the inner Source of all dignity and worthiness. Dignity is not doled out to the worthy. It grounds the inherent worthiness of things in their very nature and existence.”—Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 57
“Our freedom is threatened every time one of our young people is killed by another child . . . every time a person gets stopped and beaten by the police because of the color of their skin.”—Rosa Parks
Verse of the day
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
– James 3:17
Voice of the day
We pray for peace, O Spirit here among us; your love emboldens, judges, and restrains. Take any hate and acts of impulse from us; make leaders wise, amid competing claims.
– Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, “A Hymn for Peace”
Prayer of the day
O Spirit of peace, as we pray for wise and compassionate leadership, may your wisdom guide us, shaping our hearts with love that both emboldens and restrains.
Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience. — Peace in the Post-Christian Era, p. 90
War does not solve problems; on the contrary, it amplifies them and inflicts deep wounds on the history of peoples, which take generations to heal. No armed victory can compensate for the pain of mothers, the fear of children, or stolen futures. May diplomacy silence the weapons! May nations chart their futures with works of peace, not with violence and bloodstained conflicts! — Pope Leo XIV
Violence doesn’t work. War doesn’t work. Violence in response to violence always leads to further violence. As Jesus said, “Those who live by the sword, will die by the sword. Those who live by the bomb, the gun, the nuclear weapon, will die by bombs, guns and nuclear weapons.” You reap what you sow. The means are the ends. What goes around comes around.
War can not stop terrorism because war is terrorism. War only sows the seeds for future wars. War can never lead to lasting peace or true security or a better world or overcome evil or teach us how to be human or as Merton insists, deepen the spiritual life.
Underneath this culture of war and injustice is a sophisticated spirituality of violence, a spirituality of war, a spirituality of empire, a spirituality of injustice that has nothing to do with the living God or the Gospel of Jesus. In this false spirituality, we believe violence saves us, war brings peace, might makes right, nuclear weapons are our only security, God blesses wars, we seek not forgiveness and reconciliation but victory and domination, and the good news is not the love of enemies but the elimination of enemies. It’s heresy, blasphemy and idolatry. — Fr John Dear (source)
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”—Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
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