What Will It Take To Bring About Peace?
On this Memorial Day weekend, I took a rare break from the writing I need to do to simply sit beside a lake near my home and do nothing. Red wing blackbirds, white breasted nuthatches, and house sparrows sang, swooped and soared above me. A family of swans skimmed across the lake. There was not a cloud in the sky.
Such moments come with the privilege of living in a country at peace. I returned home from the lake to a refrigerator full of food. I slept that night in a comfortable bed. I could rest without hunger pangs, without the threat of a missile crashing into my roof.
The basic necessities and simple pleasures I take for granted are denied to people in parts of the world torn apart by war and civil unrest. The people of Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Azerbaijan, Sudan, Haiti. The list goes on.
Lately, I’ve been pouring over the writings of the Catholic peace activist Eileen Egan whose biography I am writing for Orbis Books. Eileen might not be a familiar name to many, but she lived one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th century. She was the person who introduced Mother Teresa, now St. Teresa of Calcutta, to the American public. She later traveled the globe with Mother Teresa, as well as with another of her close friends, Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, advocating for the poor and for peace.
That would be enough for one life, but Eileen’s greatest contributions stemmed from witnessing firsthand the ravages of war. She was the first woman and lay person hired by Catholic Relief Services, the church’s overseas relief organization. In the 1940s, she helped resettle tens of thousands of refugees who had lost their homes and possessions, not to mention members of their families, during World War II. Many whom she resettled were orphaned children.
Eileen would cite as her own proudest accomplishment her perseverance over 17 years in helping to convince the U.N. to recognize the right of conscientious objectors to refuse to bear arms. Both she and Dorothy Day were instrumental in persuading the Second Vatican Council to denounce nuclear weapons and the targeting of civilian populations with conventional arms.
I recently came across one of Eileen’s talks, written in 1963 and delivered at a gathering of peace and justice workers in the U.K. It was amazing just how relevant her words remain. It was sad too, as the killing continues apace. Today’s leaders seem to turn to armed conflict not as a last resort, but as a first reaction.
In a talk titled “Peacemaking in the Post-Just War Age,” Eileen noted, “In war, the work of mercy is reversed. Christ, in the person of the enemy, is blockaded and starved, is made to thirst for clean water, is made shelter-less by bombing and uprooting, and is wounded and maimed. Can the followers of Jesus accept the suspension of the works of loving mercy at the command of the nation-state?”
These thoughts sprang from her devotion to gospel values, in particular the those found in the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus singles out the merciful, the “pure of heart,” the peacemakers and those willing to be persecuted “for righteousness’ sake” as the blessed “sons and daughters of the creator.” In their midst, Jesus suggests we can seek and will find God.
Eileen did not view following this path as pacifism — an unwillingness to fight. She saw it as resisting in a new way, a way set down by Jesus, which she termed “gospel nonviolence.” It involves resisting through peaceful means, employing works of mercy rather than weapons of war to bring about peace.
In the same talk, Eileen went on to say, “The human person, as the repository of the divine spirit, is the ultimate value of creation and should not be sacrificed to any lesser value, whether it be a border, a national goal or ethnic identity.” She became convinced that there can be no justification whatsoever for war. “The just war is a fantasy of the past,” she wrote.
Make no mistake, this is a hard and complex position to take. It forces us to reflect on whether Ukraine should defend itself after being unjustly attacked. It even calls into question whether it was right to wage war against Hitler and fascism during World War II amid the slaughter of six million Jews and millions of non-Jews. Such a view contemplates that we engage in other ways of confronting evil, ways of resistance that don’t involve killing other human beings.
Eileen was realistic enough to recognize that the way of non-violence will also involve suffering. There are no winners in war. Someone will have to sacrifice something to keep the peace, she held. But it is a suffering that we agree to accept, she would say, rather than a suffering we afflict on others. It is a suffering that joins us to the redemptive suffering of Christ. By doing so, she adds, “we are helping to redeem our time.”
I admit I am still reflecting on the hard task Eileen proposes as the world continues to witness the horrible atrocities taking place in Gaza, Ukraine, and other places. One thing I do know is that I can strive to live non-violently in my own daily life, to be what peace activist Jim Forest called “an island of peace” in a violent world.
In the 1980s, Eileen and Father John Dear, a Catholic priest and fellow activist, composed a “Vow of Nonviolence” for peace organization Pax Christi USA. The vow is well worth reflecting on this Memorial Day weekend and renewing often in our hearts. Here it is in full:
RECOGNIZING THE VIOLENCE IN MY OWN HEART, yet trusting in the goodness and mercy of God, I vow for one year to practice the nonviolence of Jesus who taught us in the Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God…You have learned how it was said, ‘You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy’; but I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. In this way, you will be daughters and sons of your Creator in heaven.”
I vow to carry out in my life the love and example of Jesus:
- by striving for peace within myself and seeking to be a peacemaker in my daily life;
- by refusing to retaliate in the face of provocation and violence;
- by persevering in nonviolence of tongue and heart;
- by living conscientiously and simply so that I do not deprive others of the means to live;
- by actively resisting evil and working nonviolently to abolish war and the causes of war from my own heart and from the face of the earth.
God, I trust in Your sustaining love and believe that just as You gave me the grace and desire to offer this, so You will also bestow abundant grace to fulfill it.
As Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers. May we be one.
(To learn more about the peace work of Pax Christi USA, please visit: Pax Christi USA — Pax Christi USA: The National Catholic Peace Movement)
