The past few weeks I have spent thinking and praying about nonviolence, and especially this weekend, which in Catholicism is called the Triduum. This is the time between Holy Thursday, with the Last Supper, Friday with the Crucifixion of Jesus, Saturday with the older title of “the harrowing of hell”, and Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, and Mary Magdalene’s meeting of the Risen Jesus outside the tomb,. We urgently need a cease-fire, to limit the damage being caused by this terrible and ill-conceived war, which is both illegal and immoral. The Pope has made it very clear that there is no “just war” criteria to give it, it is simply an act of aggression and cruelty in the ongoing power plays for political dominance. As a country, we have abandoned our friends and courted our enemies, and allowed the belligerent voices to outnumber the voices of the peacemakers. Through the 20th century, from the Russian revolution to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was expanding awareness that we have to curb our violence. We were able to get every nation to sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights. This was a true miracle. The question always was, is it possible for humans to become nonviolent? Is it built into our consciousness that we will always lash out when we don’t get our way? Can we begin to be meek and humble of heart? Yes, there have been saints and martyrs, but they are rare. We hardly want to take them seriously or follow them, their heroism seems too unnatural to many people, and most of us are cowards, when it comes to what they endured. Ghandi said that the strongest model of nonviolence is Jesus. He said everyone in the world knows this except the Christians. He went to the cross, without condemning his murderers, without answering Pilate, without rebutting the Sanhedrin. He was an innocent victim, in a complicated act of consent, as He said he was giving his life for us. He said He was going to the Father, and that he had always done the Father’s will. And that He wanted to enfold all of us in that Father’s love. For many of us, he is the Lamb of God, for the Passover. God told the Jews in Egypt that they must celebrate the liberation from being slaves in Egypt, in the Exodus story, by having an innocent lamb slaughtered for the Passover meal, and putting the blood on the doorway, so their children would not be slain by the final plague God was sending to make the Egyptians let the Jewish people go. By giving us Himself, as bread and wine transubstantiated, Jesus substituted His own being for the lamb; for that which can help us not continue blood sacrifices, and the cycle of unforgiven sins piling on to scapegoat after scapegoat. At Passover, the Temple was filled with butchery, and blood ran down from the altars in rivulets. What could undo this ongoing ritual of killing in order to please God? What could create a clean heart in us, and renew our hope and faith, and give us the joy of forgiveness?Fr John Dear was a Jesuit, and he is around my age, and has been talking and writing about nonviolence since I was in college. He is very, very articulate about Jesus being the model of nonviolence, and Forgiveness being the answer to our constant need for “doing better next time.” The pathway to this self-discipline is not easy, it requires self-transcending effort. As we see that Jesus is trying to fold us into His life and love of the Father, we begin to understand the unfathomable mercy of God. The depth of God’s love is the proof that nonviolence is what we need to practice with each other. This means we need to be patient, and to try to forgive, and to ask for forgiveness. First of all, we have to recognize we NEED forgiveness, each of us, and that God is offering it to us! We have been in a slow movement toward understanding this need for nonviolence, toward recognizing that there is something very special about pouring out your life for others. Not being selfish, but aligning our will with God’s will. Recognizing that loving our neighbors is how we show God our love of God. It is how to be joyful, how to abundantly show the fruits of the spirit in our lives. It is a very practical path. It starts with “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The Quakers have been practicing this for over 200 years, and are also very good at it. They understand that they must listen to the still small voice of God in their consciences, and align their will with the will of God. We are also in a time in interfaith dialogue when we see the saintly people in other faith traditions doing the same thing; exhorting us all to nonviolence, to being peacemakers, as a response to God’s loving us. We are beginning to form coalitions of people who earnestly want to solve problems without war. To find ways to make peace. This demands self-discipline, and a recognition that we don’t always know what is good for us— we need to try to do the will of the Father. It means really listening and sharing, and recognizing what others in our communities need. Many of us have come to understand that war takes away needed resources which could help all humans live a better life. I have a bumper sticker which says “Peace begins when the hungry are fed.” I added “Send food, not bombs”. When we try to meet the needs of others, instead of “getting our own way”, peace results. In our own country we are spending so much money on the military-industrial complex, and it is our hard-earned wages which are the source of that tax money. The money is supposed to help the government keep us safe. Many of us know that bombing people does not make us safer, it increases the hatred and suffering and agony for at least another generation or two. We are sliding into WWIII. Pope Leo has been crying out for a cease-fire. He is begging for diplomacy, for actual conversations and problem-solving. I think this is a good example of WWJD. We need to beat the swords into ploughshares, we need to retire the whole nuclear arms race, we need to help our neighbors also have clean air and water, food, healthy land and honest work, schools and medical care. Maybe this cannot come to be in my lifetime, which is now short. But there is a verse in the Torah which I love, about Tikkun Olam: “You are not required to finish the work, but neither are you permitted to abandon the effort.” Our job as humans now is to build communities and international relationships which help bring about lasting peace, with love and respect and community well-being. We will have frictions and difficult problems, but if we keep our “eyes on the prize” and try to “bend the arc toward justice,” our grandchildren or great-grandchildren may live in a a world at peace, not in a dictatorship, but in freedom and cooperative efforts. And meanwhile, we all must keep trying to align our will with the will of that benevolent source of all life, which will not let us fall into despair, which forgives us, which pours out mercy beyond all telling. As Elizabeth Johnson has said, no words can adequately encompass that Being, but all language we use is like pointing a finger at the moon. We use images and symbols to describe that source. And God knows every language and hears every prayer. God knows our hearts. And Jesus said “Come, follow me.” He met them in Galilee after the Resurrection. They found him cooking breakfast on the beach. He never chastised them for scattering and hiding, when he was being crucified. He said “Come and eat.”