Morsels from John Dear SJ

The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.

The false spirituality of war - “war is not the will of God”

The last words of Jesus to the church - “put down your sword”

The message of Jesus from the Cross - the violence stops here in my body.

John Dear is here in Vancouver for the Thomas Merton Society's annual conference on peace. These are some of the powerful bits I came away with tonight.

Prayer

What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?

Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude

Nonviolence

Very often people object that nonviolence seems to imply passive acceptance of injustice and evil and therefore that it is a kind of cooperation with evil. Not at all. The genuine concept of nonviolence implies not only active and effective resistance to evil but in fact a more effective resistance... But the resistance which is taught in the Gospel is aimed not at the evil-doer but at evil in its source.

Thomas Merton
from Passion For Peace