A Lesson From Peace Activist Eileen Egan In This Time Of War

A mother and her children evacuate after Russian military bombarded Ukrainian cities last week. (Photo courtesy of BBC.com)

Over the past few decades, I’ve come to believe that war is always the wrong answer. Was it not Christ who said to love our adversaries and blessed are the peacemakers? It’s been hard to hold onto that belief as I watch so many innocent people — the elderly, women, children, even nuns — suffer an unnecessary and unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

One photo in particular captured for me the absurdity of this conflict. It was an image of Benedictine sisters huddled in their monastery’s basement, clutching a statue of the Blessed Mother. Missiles had exploded in their city in the early morning hours. The attack began, according to the newspaper l’Osservatore Romano, when the sisters were singing their morning prayers.

They continued praying.

Benedictine sisters of the Monastery of the Immaculate Conception in Ukraine huddle for safety.

I received a great gift recently when I was asked to review the personal papers of the peace activist and co-founder of Pax Christi USA, Eileen Egan. Eileen had been St. Teresa of Calcutta’s traveling companion and official biographer. She was a close friend and colleague of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day.

Eileen had been instrumental in convincing the Second Vatican Council as well as the U.N. to recognize conscientious objection to war as a human right.

Eileen Egan, left, Dorothy Day, center, and Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta, at a Catholic Worker House in the late 1970s. Egan worked closely with both women.

I went back this week to Eileen’s writings to see how she and others who seek the way of non-violence might respond to the events unfolding in Europe. I received an unexpected insight from a story her research assitant Bernice McCann had recorded about a conversation she had with Eileen.

Bernice asked whether Eileen thought people were justified in defending themselves if they were unjustly attacked. Eileen responded, “Use the Eucharist as your defense. We must all learn to use the Eucharist as our defense.”

Bernice McCann helped Eileen Egan write her book, “Peace Be With You.”

I puzzled for a long time over what this response might mean. Then an answer of sorts came to me.

Given the weaknesses of our human nature, war is probably always going to be with us. Sadly, there are always going to be power-mad leaders hungry for territory and domination, as we saw in World War II and as we are seeing now with the Russian invasion. What then can be done?

I think Eileen meant that we do everything we can to prevent war from breaking out. And when we can’t stop it, we do all we can to help the people, like those monastic sisters huddled in their basement, who are caught within the ugly vise of war.

We make certain — whether through donations to non-combatant organizations or by putting pressure on our own government — that those suffering through war receive food, medicine and other critical health supplies. We keep pressuring the world’s governments to use every non-violent means to end the conflict.

Eileen Egan argued no war can be justified, citing gospel teachings.

In other words, we lean on the Eurcharist as our defense.

Eileen also worked throughout her life for the total elimination of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction. She was not someone who merely talked about nonviolence. She was tested. As a member of Catholic Relief Services, she helped resettle refugees following World War II. She knew firsthand war’s tragic effects on civilians and chronicled them in For Whom There Is No Room: Scenes from the Refugee World. It is a book that still resonates today.

She showed this too when she was attacked at the age of 80 by a mentally ill man on the streets of New York. Despite suffering a broken hip and fractured ribs, Eileen refused to testify against her mugger. She kept in touch with him when she was in jail and helped arrange for him to live at a halfway house after his release.

“I look on my attacker as a human being,” she said at the time. “I don’t want to push him further down. I’d rather raise him up.”

Would that be our attitude toward all who test our compassion.

I believe Eileen would also counsel us to pray unceasingly for an end to the war, and the causes of war. She began each day in contemplative prayer, praying and reflecting on Scripture in silence. She once told Bernice McCann, “They make fun of us, the Catholic Workers, for praying so much, but we don’t care because we already know it works.”

May the spirit of Eileen Egan and her cherished friends — St. Teresa of Calcutta and Dorothy Day — guide our leaders and our own hearts in these troubling times.

Books by Eileen Egan:

Peace Be With You: Justified Warfare or The Way of Nonviolence

Such a Vision of the Street: Mother Teresa, The Spirit and the Work

For Whom There Is No Room: Scenes from the Refugee World

Prayer Times with Mother Teresa: A New Adventure in Prayer

Suffering Into Joy: What Mother Teresa Teaches About True Joy (with Kathleen Egan, OSB)

Blessed Are You: Mother Teresa and the Beatitudes (with Kathleen Egan, OSB).

War might always be with us. The way of nonviolence asks us to work to prevent war, and if war breaks out, strive to stop it and heal those harmed by war. (Photo courtesy of Pressenza).