World Day Of Prayer For Peace

​Every reading for this weekend explores something about our experience of the Sacred and the Holy.  It suggests that it doesn't matter so much that we tell ourselves that we are searching for God; because the moment we say the words it is clear that God has already found us.  And, having found us, He talks to us of the Spirit and the Truth that is universally available (Jn.4,21,24).  The Spirit shakes the house in which we live and puts Justice, Mercy, Peace, Love and Compassion at the top of our agenda.  God is present to us always but speaks most clearly to us in the voice of the poor and of those who are suffering.  The High Altar, symbol of the rock which is the Beloved Son of God, and the rock that is Peter, becomes the mirror in which we see ourselves passionately 
committed together to building a new humanity and a new community where Peace reigns over all. 
 
Eknath Easwarn was travelling from Delhi to Simla.  The train stopped at the historic battlefield of the Bhagavad Gita.  The train filled with excitement as the passengers talked about the great battle which took place on the ground on which they were now standing.  But Eknath stayed in his seat for he knew that the real battlefield was right inside each passenger on the train. (The End of Sorrow, the Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, vol 1, Nilgirie Press, 1975) 
 
What if the Gate of Heaven, the house of God is inside each of us? What if this is the only place from which true Peace can come? 
 
Thomas Merton put it so beautifully, 
 
At the centre of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal from which God disposes of our lives, which  is  inaccessible  to  the  fantasies  of  our  own  mind  or  the  brutalities  of  our  own  will.   This  little  point  of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure Glory of God in us.  It is, so to speak, His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence as daughters and sons. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.  It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming  together  in  the  face  and  blaze  of  a  sun  that  would  make  all  the  darkness  and  cruelty  of  life  vanish completely.   I  have no programme for seeing this.  It  is  only  given.  But the Gate  of  Heaven  is everywhere. 
(Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.142,Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, 1966) 
 
By contrast, have a look at some of the poetry on the Pax Christi website which explores the other side of Peace and why it is so important that it takes centre stage in our journey as disciples of Jesus. 
 
LIONS AND DONKEYS  
 
And after all the carnage,  after all the millions of dead  and the billions of bullets  had been expended,  do you know the greatest moral failing of them all? 
 Beyond all the bayonettings, shootings, gassings, pulverisings,  
something far more deadly in effect took place in a railway coach at Compiègne  and in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles:          
the Humiliation of the Vanquished  and the Vengeance of the Victors,  
grinding Germany into the dirt  and the Jews into the Camps  and the World back into War.  All for want of imagination and forgiveness, reconciliation and friendship  and a Christ-like love of enemy.​

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