2003 15 June- 27 July, Catholic Pictorial, Peace on earth

Peace on earth 1

Whose peace are you looking for?


In the pilgrimage church of Our Lady of Aberteifi at Cardigan, is a cross that Canon Cunnane rescued from oblivion. It is inscribed with the words Rex, Dux, Lux and Pax, all meeting on the X! Christ is our king, our leader, our light - and our peace. Well, it must be obvious, in the light of recent military events, that we are not our own peace!
Pious people living in non-militarised zones, used to say that peace was not merely the absence of war.
This was naive of us. Now we would be glad just to have the absence of war.
In Iraq the ‘Allies’ have, without international sanction, occupied a country whose people over the past ten years have been reduced to near starvation, in order to prevent them from using deadly weapons of mass destruction that they no longer appear to have, and to free them from an oppressive dictator, by providing something they regard as even less acceptable.
There is a magnificent prolife advertisment with the caption Abortion hurts mothers and it kills babies. The same is true of war. Except in this. War hurts everybody and it kills some bodies. Our armed forces, to their untold fear, pain, death and incomprehension, have been caused by what Tolstoy would call “the sum of our political will”, to engage in activities which in the end, will hurt them - and us - the most. But before we indignantly leap on the streets with our banner saying ‘Peace’, or ‘It wasn’t me wot did it, Sir’, pause for thought.
Do we mean peace? Do we have peace? Can we give peace?
Martin Luther King wrote a guide for those civil rights workers who planned to protest against American injustice:

I HEREBY PLEDGE MYSELF - MY PERSON AND BODY - TO THE NONVIOLENT MOVEMENT. THEREFORE I WILL KEEP THE FOLLOWING TEN COMMANDMENTS
1. MEDITATE daily on the teachings and life of Jesus.
2. REMEMBER always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation - not victory.
3. WALK and TALK in the manner of love, for God is love.
4. PRAY daily to be used by God in order that all men might be free.
5. SACRIFICE personal wishes in order that all men might he free.
6. OBSERVE with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy.
7. SEEK to perform regular service for others and for the world.
8. REFRAIN from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart.
9. STRIVE to be in good spiritual and bodily health.
10. FOLLOW the directions of the movement and of the captain on a demonstration.
I sign this pledge, having seriously considered what I do and with the determination and will to persevere................

On our own, we have no peace to give. That is, incidentally, why peace protests back in the sixties, held under the aegis of the old Communist party came such a frequent cropper: they could not cope with police provocation and the infiltration of counter-activists. They had no peace to give because peace is Christ, who made peace by his blood on the Cross, who made out of two people, one body; through whom, in the Holy Spirit, we all have our way to come to the Father.
[Eph. 2.14-18]

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Peace on earth 2
Patient for peace


Coulport on Loch Long is one of several depots at which Britain stores her supply of Weapons of Mass Destruction; specifically, Trident warheads. Joan and Joy are both old age pensioners; they were part of a small peace vigil outside the MOD’s hardware there. They knelt in the gateway to pray - thus placing themselves outside the law. On Ash Wednesday they were fined £250 each. Joy said she was happy to be in court on a day dedicated to repentance; they both remembered the atom bomb falling on Hiroshima and the UN resolution that atomic weapons should not be used again. That was fifty years ago.
Listening to this read in the refectory (an item from the commendable Independent Catholic News Online) moved us almost to tears.
Footwork
Sr Laetitia and Sr Electra, before they heard the still small voice of calm marched out and sat-in with most things that were going. I asked Sr Electra to share some of her experiences.
“In the nineteen seventies I was a teenager, not a Catholic, not even a Christian, demonstrating with those who demonstrated against Vietnam, the Nuclear Arms Race and South Africa; especially, South Africa.
“Of course, in the Seventies our British economy was still heavily tied up with that of South Africa of which, like Iraq, we had been a past administrator. Gold mines were still our god, and we needed SA’s vast, black slave labour force to maintain our financial stability. It was only when the gold finally began to run out that Britain became a governmental supporter of democracy in South Africa.
I had, with thousands of others, come up to London to march upon the South African Embassy, with the amiable intention of serenading the Ambassador with “We shall not be moved!”
I fell in with an American widow of a Vietnam serviceman and a veteran of many marches. She gave me a vivid description of life on the streets with the American police. I felt secure in the knowledge that “that sort of thing” didn’t happen here.
About five hundred yards ahead of us there was something which seemed like a contrary ripple in the order of the marchers; nothing more. My new-found friend grabbed my wrist and dived off the route into a side street, turned into a large store and headed for the stairs. We looked down on the road we had been walking on seven minutes before. People were screaming and shouting, and the police were charging our former companions with batons. Tear gas was hurled across the rapidly cleared space.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What happened?”
“Maybe I’m wrong,” said my kindly American. “But back home we have extreme nationalist groups; the pro-war, anti-race lobby, sort of.”
I agreed Britain also had extreme nationalist groups.
“Somebody,” she said, “Tips them off. It may be a counter demonstration that is allowed to meet yours head on, or it may be a bit more subtle. They march with you a bit behind the front rank. When the march is about fifteen feet from a crossroads, either side of which the police just happen to be waiting, someone starts heaving bricks through windows or laying into his neighbour. The people behind don’t know what is happening. They try to get out of the way. There is a rush. And - not everyone on a peace march is trained to Gandhian passive resistance. People who are hit frequently start hitting back. And they almost always start shouting. The news headlines the following day read “Police step in to quell Peace March riot”. Nobody asks how the riot started or why people who favour peace should suddenly and inexplicably start fighting themselves. There are infinite variants on this theme, of course. But it kinda describes what you and I have just been in.”
I agreed it did.
“And, like I said, don’t you have extreme Nationalist groups here, too?”
I agreed we had.”

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Peace on Earth 3
Anger management course

Sister Athene is a devout contemplative nun who spends seven hours per day doing strictly prayerful things. Since the War Against Terrorism burst on our world she has tried to do overtime - night and morning. This might be more praiseworthy if the cost were not so high. On Monday she collided with Sister Madonna about the hymn numbers, on Tuesday she harassed Sister Cosima about the garden, on Wednesday she spoke unreasonably on the subject of efficiency to Sister Laetitia, on Thursday she wound herself into a wrathful fit over the washing-up because she wanted extra time to pray for peace. On Friday we sent her to bed. Our life then resumed its vivid, dynamic but peaceful ambience. The red on the rainbow toned down a bit.
The lesson: it is no good canvassing for peace, demonstrating for peace, or above all, praying for peace if you are not living for peace!!!

How to be peaceful
Count to one hundred and/or go for a walk before you reply to an irritating dig.
Don’t say everything you think: it may be true, but is it helpful?
Try to smooth others’ paths. Don’t leave moral, emotional or physical rocks in their way for them to fall over.
Smile.
Keep smiling. The upward turn of the lips sends extra blood to the brain. It does wonders.
Change the internal subject: go and absorb yourself with something you really like for ten minutes and you will find the brooded-upon-agitation gets into proportion.
Maybe you won’t murder your neighbour, after all!

Fighting war-addiction
Here is a serious plan.
These are the famous Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. We have put anger in italics where the original read alcohol:

1. We admitted we were powerless over anger - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all the persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry it out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message as people converted to peace, and to practise these principles in all our affairs.

Try it. If you want peace, make peace.

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Peace on Earth 4
Not an advertisement feature

“Pure heaven in the Bahamas from just £899 [each], Paradise on earth, Thailand, from £550,” Sister Jerome read out from the holiday ads in some serious and suitably catholic publication [National Geographic, I think].
“Cheap, at the price,” murmured Sister Isabelle. “I mean, it is costing us not less than everything.”
“What does it really cost; the holiday, that is?” I asked.
“Purgatory, I should imagine,” murmured Sister Isabelle.
I became somewhat obsessed with finding adverts that sold you peace. I found a peace-giving Ford car; total tranquility joss sticks, Peace Rose Shower Gel, the right beer and the right undertaker.
The one I really admired was Lipton’s Mint Flavoured Tchae discovered by the Emperor Shen Nung in BC 2737, which promotes those relaxing, stress-free moments. It really did something for me - the promise, not the tea.
I consulted the Catechism - see article [2304]. I read Cardinal Ratzinger’s views. There is to be a revised, short version of the Catechism. The section on Just Wars is to be reviewed. The Cardinal said [Zenit News Website, May] that it is hard to imagine any modern war with its far reaching powers of destruction as having the capacity to be just. The interviewer braced himself and asked the Cardinal outright if the occupation of Iraq fulfilled the requirements for a just war. The Cardinal said plainly, No it did not.
Some of our family say the rosary each evening, for peace. I asked them what made peace? Sister Cosima said, simply, Living it.

A word in time
So I dug myself into the beginning [and end] of all things; the Word. Before reading the Word of the Lord in the Gospels, I went to the Book of Deuteronomy:
I set before you today, life and death; good and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I give you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his words, his laws and his precepts, then you will live. You will multiply. The Lord will bless you and you will enter and take possession of the land of peace. But if you let your heart be turned away and close your ears and make yourself idols of prosperity and ease and evasion, you will die. You will have no lasting home in peace. As heaven and earth are my witnesses.
[Deut. 30:15-20]

Peace be with you.
This is the angels’ greeting when they bring the Word of God to Zachariah, to Mary; to the shepherds. It is the greeting of the Lord Jesus who has walked out of the tomb of death. Peace I leave you, my peace I give you. My Peace - the peace - and glory - to be found in the immobility of nails on a cross. This is not what the world offers you. Do not let your hearts be disturbed [Jn.14:27-28]. Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, I am sending you. This is my gift to you. Receive the Holy Spirit [Jn.20:21-22]. You are ambassadors of Christ [2Cor.5:20]. The Holy Spirit will give you the answers [Jn.14:26].

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Peace on earth 5
Instrument of peace


Poggio Bustone - to Anglo-Saxon ears it sounds like the name of a circus clown - is a village high up in the Rieti district of Italy. Around 1218 Francis of Assisi went there looking for the last sort of peace: a sense that one has been forgiven. Sitting outside the wattle fronted caves where the Brothers lived, and listening to the bells ringing from the village, way below, Francis let God suck the poison out of his swollen and painful memories.
The light, the high clean air, the sound of water from the spring that is now the well of the Friary and the last resonance of the bells were all at once swept up into an angel proclaiming peace. Francis put his head on a rock and fell into a dead and dreamless sleep. When he woke up he was full of new energy. The wounds from the serpent that bites had gone. He went down into the valley to share the good news with the rest of us.
You may not quite find this version of the story in the early Franciscan sources. But you can take our word for it. It is authentic!
Another thing you won’t find in the early Franciscan sources is the famous prayer of Saint Francis: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. It first made its appearance on the back of the jubilee card of an American priest, in the early twentieth century. Part of it mirrors a prayer of one of Francis’ companions, Brother Giles. The rest - like our reading of the scenario at Poggio Bustone - is a matter of private revelation! Private, it may have been, but - indisputably - it is a revelation.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, unity;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is error, truth;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is sadness, joy;
where there is darkness, light.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned.
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

An instrument of peace is like an instrument of war. It is a thing used to an end. One human being selects a gun and shoots another human being. The gun is the instrument.
But God selects a human to be the instrument. He selects you. You are the weapon he uses.
A weapon of destruction is projected by an explosion. You are projected by an implosion. Weapons of peace are not blown to bits. Their already fragmented pieces are put together - by forgiveness.

Peace at a stroke
Here is something you can do that is an absolutely concrete act of anti-violence. Examine the brokenness, pain and poison in your life. Then take it to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and ask for forgiveness. When you have received the sacrament, ask, as Francis did, to feel that healing aid. After reciting the Peace Prayer as your penance, go down the mountain and share that peace with the people in the plain. You cannot give a peace you don’t possess. But if you have peace the opportunity to give it away will be offered you. Guaranteed! [That’s another private revelation.]

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Peace on earth 6
A place for peace

We were sitting round chatting as a family and Sr. Kunigunda was describing the atmosphere of a launderette. Before they became slightly post-state-of-the-art, launderettes promoted a certain sort of community. Marriages are not made in heaven but they were quite often arranged in launderettes. Washing is nearly a mystical experience. Even in the Book of Revelation the saints wear spotless white.
“Have a shower, dear, and put on some clean clothes,” was the nearest my earthly mother got to spiritual advice. But come to think of it, my heavenly Mother, the Church, offers me the gift of Baptism, a white robe and a new name.
The Church is the name for the space under the thundering waterfall of life and grace which comes through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

Church and churches
Saint Francis of Assisi loved things. He loved the sun and moon, wind and water, brothers and sisters - and sacred places.
He loved all these things with a new and tremendous thrill because he was never able to take them for granted. He literally was not able to say, “Oh, sure, another sunrise.” He found each breath of air a mystery, and each human a part of the revelation of God. This is a real way to live peace: start valuing what you have.
In Francis’ life a very special part was played by places. Uniquely, his life found its pattern at the place of the Portiuncula. Portiuncula means little portion. It was the nickname of a small half ruined chapel on the plain below Assisi, dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels. Francis rented it from the Benedictines of Mount Subasio for an annual basket of freshwater fish. This custom continues to the present day, though now the Portiuncula stands dwarfed and painted, inside an enormous Baroque basilica.
Francis and his brothers repaired the church and lived round its wattle huts. Saint Mary’s was the first Franciscan community.

Post-paradise
We are people who have been exiled from paradise. If you want to go to the ultimate reduction, there are only two things on earth: houses and gardens. All ‘gardens’, all outdoor spaces, conspire ceaselessly to show us that time is constantly moving on in the perpetual grip of the fertility of death. Houses are always an attempt to defy time and create stability. “I just want to shut the door on the whole thing....” Houses imitate eternity, on the shores of which, time’s endless rush and futility end. This is a shadow of the final truth. In the Book of Revelation Saint John sees the New Jerusalem as a walled city which is the ultimate form of house.
Francis felt “here and in all the churches of the world” that the Portiuncula belonged to this final order of heavenly mansion. He persuaded a bemused Pope to sanction his view by giving to the Portiuncula the gift of the freedom of heaven, which was subsequently extended to all Franciscan Churches on the 1st and 2nd of August.
What is it?
The gift Francis wanted everyone to receive in his church, under the waterfall from heaven, was newness. He wanted to take everybody to heaven, washed clean in white clothes. In his time the only way to acquire this spiritual grace was by going on crusade to Jerusalem, at the risk of your life, in order to reclaim that place on earth which seemed nearest to heaven.
But Francis got the Pope to extend that gift to his own little place!
Today, the Portiuncula Pardon or Indulgence for the remission of the temporal punishment due to sin is available in any Franciscan Church on the 1st and 2nd of August. Our celebration for this year with be at 6.30 pm on Friday August 1st. The Sacrament of reconciliation will be available from 5.30 pm onwards. Ty Mam Duw is in Hawarden, North Wales, see map:
If you are bringing a coach please phone in advance to facilitate parking.
Looking forward to seeing you! (heaven via Hawarden!)