Peace trumps war

This is a good sign and one in keeping with this Sunday’s theme of communication. On this day, we remember Jesus ascended to the Father and entrusted to us the mission of communicating the Good News to the ends of the earth. This good news is never a word of war but a word of peace: “Peace be with you.” The movement of US warships in the Korean peninsula, with Japan promising to join in, in response to Kim Jong-un’s threat of missile and nuclear testing, reminds us of those haunting days of the Cuban missile crisis.

Even within the Church at that time communication often turned into suspicion and recrimination.

Then arose a voice for peace, that of Good Pope John (John XXIII), insisting there was another way, asking the US and Russia to think again. And they did. War was averted.

Another Good Pope, Francis, in his message for World Communications Day is easily predisposed to pessimism and violence: “I’m convinced that we have to break the vicious circle of anxiety and stem the spiral of fear resulting from a constant focus on bad news — wars, terrorism, scandals and all sorts of human failure.” The Pope invites us to use different “lens” that will help us to view reality from fresh perspectives.

This is what Mary tried to do in her apparitions in Fatima in 1917. She wanted people to imagine a different kind of world, one not marred by so much violence, so many millions of victims.

There she was, pleading for penance and conversion, to end one war (World War I) so as to avoid another (World War II). On neither occasion did the world listen, and humanity was thrust into the worst atrocities of human history. One hundred years later, her message is still valid: peace must be preferred to war; warmongering must give way to peacemaking.

This is a timely message for Christian evangelists.

The gospel we must preach, of this we have no doubt for Christ commands it. But the manner in which we preach it is just as important. This means we must look at the other not as the enemy to be overcome, the foe to be vanquished, but as a brother or sister who by the witness of his or her own religion must positively impact the world.

We are not the only pilgrims in the world; they are, too, and we trudge different paths in the hope that the one God would finally bring everything to His good purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time (Eph 1:9-10).

Christians, therefore, must be the first witnesses of this “fraternity among brethren”. This was wonderfully demonstrated in the recently renovated burial tomb of Jesus in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here, Roman Catholics, Armenians and Greek Orthodox–known for their tensions and scuffles–worked together for the greater good. May their efforts be a vivid metaphor for peacemaking in the 21st century.