Trust in God’s peace
Joseph was distraught at the news that Mary would have a baby. He thought of divorcing her quietly, not accusing her of infidelity, but leaving her and the child. But the angel of God greets him with the words of divine consolation frequently uttered throughout Scripture: “Be not afraid.” The angel advises Joseph to neither accuse Mary nor quietly leave her, but to remain by her side, and receive her child, who is God with us.
We often feel overwhelmed by the circumstances in our lives and in our world. We may be tempted to seek an easy way out, or even to respond in ways that betray our faith in a compassionate God. Throughout the last year, the world has watched in horror as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to a brutal and drawn-out war. Like Joseph, we are driven by compassion and concern, but we may despair of finding an appropriate response.
Throughout the war, however, Pope Francis has worked unrelentingly to bring God’s message of peace through nonviolence to the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the world. It is difficult to tell the victims of war, as the bombs drop, “Be not afraid.” But Francis has surely heard the angel’s message, and he has addressed the war almost daily, denouncing the invasion, insisting repeatedly that conflict can never be solved with violence, that war is never just, while remaining sensitive to the excruciating decisions Ukrainians face, and the moral complexities of defending one’s home and community in a world that has failed to invest adequately in developing and employing nonviolent tools for preventing and confronting violence.
We must always be open to dialogue, Francis says, even with the aggressor. “It smells bad, but it has to be done.”
Repeating a message from 2017, he says, “One hundred years ago, Benedict XV... described the war as a ‘useless massacre.’ Disassociating oneself from the so-called ‘reasons for the war’ seemed to many to be almost an affront. But history teaches that war is always and only a useless massacre. Let us help each other... to embark on paths of nonviolence and paths of justice, which favor peace. Because in the face of peace we cannot be indifferent or neutral...That is why we invoke the ius pacis as the right of all to resolve conflicts without violence. That is why we repeat: never again war, never again against others, never again without others!”
Prayer
Dear God, the harvest is plenty and the laborers are few.
Your people long for peace,
they thirst for justice.
Send into our midst women and men
whose hearts can embrace the entire world.
Send into our midst young and old,
from all your beloved cultures and races,
Who offer their arms to lift up the lowly and oppressed.
Send into our midst new peacemakers
Who will walk with the powerless,
as well as those in power
To proclaim your teaching and
To witness against hate, greed, fear and strife.
Create us anew as your peacemakers, O God,
And send us your peace.
– “Prayer for Vocations to Peacemaking” by Pax Christi