Rome Newsroom, Jun 30, 2024 / 09:59 am (CNA).
Pope Francis prayed for the intercession of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on Sunday to convert “the hearts of those who want war” to projects of dialogue and peace.
On the last day of June, a month that the Catholic Church dedicates to the Sacred Heart, the pope asked people to continue praying for Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Myanmar, and other parts of the world where there is much suffering caused by war.
Pope Francis also asked people to remember the suffering of persecuted Christians during his Angelus address on June 29.
“Today we remember the protomartyrs of Rome. We too live in a time of martyrdom even more than in the first centuries,” he said.
“In many parts of the world, many of our brothers and sisters suffer from discrimination and persecution because of their faith, thus fertilizing the Church. Others face a ‘martyrdom with white gloves.’ Let us support them and be inspired by their witness to the love of Christ.”
Reflecting on Sunday’s Gospel in which Jesus healed a bleeding woman and raised a girl from the dead, the pope urged everyone to remember that the Lord draws close to our suffering and wounds.
“In the face of bodily and spiritual sufferings, of the wounds our souls bear, of the situations that crush us, and even in the face of sin, God does not keep us at a distance,” Pope Francis said.
“On the contrary, He draws near to let Himself be touched and to touch us, and He always raises us from death. He always takes us by the hand to say: daughter, son, arise!”
Pope Francis asked people to reflect on whether they keep a distance from people who are suffering or draw close to them to offer them a helping hand to lift them up in imitation of Jesus.
He urged people to look to the heart of God so that the Church and society do not exclude anyone, but offer everyone the opportunity to “be welcomed and loved without labels [and] without prejudice.”
“Let us fix in our hearts this image Jesus gives us: God is one who takes you by the hand and lifts you up, one who lets himself be touched by your pain and touches you to heal you and restore your life. He does not discriminate against anyone because he loves everyone,” Francis said.
“Let us pray to the Holy Virgin. May she who is the mother of tenderness, intercede for us and for the whole world.”
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About the asymmetry imposed by some of those who “want war”…
Underscoring the merit of purposive resistance to genuine and abysmal evil, the jihadist network clearly knows that killing of innocents is immoral, but they are experiencing a horrified “desire to escape reality or transform it along the lines of a second reality more congenial to the pheumopathological terrorist imagination.”
The big-word “pheumopathological” applies to a spiritual sickness rather than any psychological disorder or to any more rational thought process at least calculated to achieve justice, if by whatever means. Yes, pray for conversion, but they know (!) what they are doing; “They are not psychopaths who cannot distinguish good and evil or innocence and guilt” (Barry Cooper, “Jihadists’ and the War on Terrorism,” The Intercollegiate Review, Spring 2007).
It is a very fallen world.
“Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary” – Mahatma Gandhi
While we’re quoting heathens: “Yeah, Ghandi, of course it’s temporary. Everything in the world is transitory.” — Buddha
Not that we need turn to the heathens. Psalm 146:4 implies much the same.
Hoo boy. Not many people want war per se. Yes, they exist, but the personality traits that might make someone want chaos and killing are pretty much incompatible with advancement in a nation of any real size … usually. High-ranking exceptions can exist, but they usually end up burning down their own counties in a few years.
Often at least one side sees war not as a choice, but rather as a reality thrust upon them by their adversaries, and the question is only how to conduct the war that already exists. BOTH SIDE in a war can feel that way. For example, the US thought Japan started WW2 by the attack on Pearl Harbor, but Japan thought the US and European powers had started it by attempting to deny Japan access to necessary resources. Both sides felt the other pushed them into war in the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and World War 1, too.
There will always be wars and rumors of wars; there will always be government officials willing to start wars for cheap bananas or cheap oil. But there are things more worth dying for than bananas and oil.
Even Pope Francis is (surprise!) inconsistent on this topic. If war is really so bad, he should tell Ukraine to just give up the Russian-speaking provinces to Russia — surely they are not worth the evil of war, right? And if they are, then whose lands, or government, or way of life is NOT worth defending, if necessary, by war?