We welcome the young energy of Occupy Port Huron at the Jan. 30th opening of Season for Nonviolence 2013.
They double our numbers at the end of that evening.
I pray at daily mass for a multiplication of national service opportunities for our young people—a nonviolent national service that serves God first, and country second. An AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, and missionary services---bigger than the armed services. We are not called to be soldiers by Christ, but servants of each other. When we judge another an enemy, we determine that they’re guilty and not innocent. We use that to justify the violence of war.
But there are always innocents living in the homes of the
enemy. An innocent can never be killed
intentionally. Yet abortions and
infanticides are conducted every day in war.
Can even one of them be justified?
The targets of our smart bombs include the babies at the breast, and in
the wombs, of terrorists’ wives at their household tasks.
The mind that kills the innocent in the womb by abortion is the same as the one that kills innocence in war—we didn’t mean to—their lives were just in the way of our greater purposes, our need to protect our interests. Jesus never justified killing, not for benefit of God nor country, nor personal convenience. His life, death and resurrection teach the opposite reality—God is infinite love, God is infinite mercy.
There is real risk in following Christ’s way. Onward Christian soldiers means courage, but
no reliance on guns bombs or vacuum extractors.
We can’t spread the Good News until we trust in His Way. How can we evangelize young people when we
delete the Sermon on the Mount? How can
they believe, or respect life, if all they see is the invitation to participate
in an endless stream of preemptive wars on our church and society’s behalf?
So read and pray the Gospels, and then do all you can to
recruit new peacemakers for national and community service.
The Sermon on the Mount by Cosimo Roselli
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