Three-part Advent theology series on peace featuring local authors now available
During the season of Advent, readers are invited to dive deeper into theological teachings related to peace. Through a three-part series, local authors share their insight and encourage people to look inward to create and support peace at home, in our communities and in the world.
Read the first in the series here. Read the remaining two parts at thecentralminnesotacatholic.org, where you also can subscribe to the Friday Feed weekly digital newsletter.
Part 1: Blessed are the meek
By Micah Kiel
Our God is a God of life. So, we mourn and grieve when war and violence dominate the headlines. We feel this acutely during Advent, when our readings and prayers ache for a future without violence and strife. What are we to do? How can we build a world of peace where all life can flourish?
For help, I’d like to turn to an essay written by Thomas Merton in 1967, titled “Blessed are the Meek: The Christian Roots of Nonviolence.” In simple language, he spells out a path for all Christians to follow and authentically seek a world of peace.
The roots of this essay come from Jesus’ beatitudes in Matthew 5. Merton combines several images from the Gospel to help us understand what true meekness looks like. We need to think of meekness as a mustard seed: something that is small and insignificant, but in it lies the power of God to transform the world. To be meek means that we have to get rid of the protection of violence.
Instead, Merton says we must be vulnerable. Vulnerability is necessary “because [we] believe that the hidden power of the Gospel is demanding to be manifested in and through [our] own poor person.” Jesus exemplifies vulnerability. He set aside his own power and rights, humbled himself, and succumbed to violence. From this disposition flows Jesus’ teachings: love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you; turn the other cheek. Very few places in our world — if any — will admit these values and practices. Our world operates instead on retaliation, grudge and arrogance. Vulnerability is devalued. But, as Jesus reminds us, God’s kingdom is not of this world.
Merton offers two further challenges worth pondering. First, if we are to seek peace, every Christian must live a life that is not for him or herself, but “for others, that is for the poor and the underprivileged.” The Christian life entails a call to set aside one’s own rights and good and seek the good of the other. The language of Paul comes to mind, when he says “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4). Our world is a world of selfishness and greed. Any attempt to look to the interests of others will clash with what we are supposed to do as good citizens and consumers. But the seeds of war are always planted in and watered with injustice. As Pope Paul VI famously said in 1972, “If you want peace, work for justice.”
Second, Merton asks us this question: “Are we willing to learn something from our adversary?” If a new truth is made known to us from them, “will we accept it?” Are we “willing to admit that he [or she] is not totally inhumane, wrong, unreasonable, cruel, etc?” Here Merton has identified a deep truth. We prefer to deal in innuendo and stereotypes about our enemies. It is easier if we dehumanize them, turn them into cretins and savages. Loving our enemies requires that we embrace them in all their humanity with the humility to learn from them and accept the truth they might present to us.
Ultimately, Merton says we need to have hope in three things: God; the future (which God controls); and in other humans (in whom God dwells). This is the only way to transform ourselves, and therefore the world: “The meekness and humility which Christ extolled in the Sermon on the Mount and which are the basis of true Christian nonviolence are inseparable from an eschatological Christian hope which is completely open to the presence of God in the world and therefore in the presence of our brother who is always seen, no matter who he may be, in the perspective of the kingdom.”
These challenges from Merton allow us to glimpse a path of personal transformation, which is where our transformation of the world needs to start. They also require of us a certain positivity — a hope — that God controls history. Those who are committed to nonviolence and attempt to live out the beatitudes, “refuse to despair of the world and abandon it to a supposedly evil fate which it has brought upon itself. Instead, like Christ himself, the Christian takes upon his own shoulders the yoke of the Savior, meek and humble of heart.”
About the authors:
Part 1: Blessed are the meek
Micah Kiel is associate professor of theology at Saint John’s University and School of Theology and the College of Saint Benedict. He has a bachelor’s in music performance from Saint John’s University in Collegeville, and a master of divinity and doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of the recently published, “Be Transformed: A Biblical Journey Toward a More Just World,” published by Liturgical Press. He is a regular contributor to Give us This Day.
Part 2: Standing still in the midst of a busy world: Peace as an inner disposition of spirit
Daniella Zsupan-Jerome is assistant professor of pastoral theology at Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary. She also directs Sustained Encuentro, a grant project of the Lilly Endowment’s Pathway to Tomorrow initiative. Her research explores the intersection of social communication, digital culture, and pastoral theology. She has served as a consultant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Communications, as an educational consultant to the Catholic Media Association, and as a tutor for the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication’s Faith in the Digital Age project. She recently authored a book, “Speak Lord, Your Servant is Listening,” published by Liturgical Press.
Part 3: The end of nonviolence: A revolution of values
Chris Conway is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Saint John’s University School of Theology and Seminary. He completed his doctoral studies at Boston College in comparative theology focusing on Christianity and Hinduism. His areas of research include spiritual practices and devotional traditions in Christianity and Hinduism. He is the co-editor of the book “Interreligious Hermeneutics” with Catherine Cornille. His recent publications include “The One Who Prays Is a (Comparative Theologian): The Spirituality of Francis Clooney’s Comparative Theology,” in “The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Comparative Theology” and “Fostering Religious Inclusion on Campus: Insights from Student Experiences” in “Inclusion in Higher Education: Research Initiatives on Campus” with Megan Sheehan, Maria Schrupp, D’Havian Scott and Rediet Negede Lewi.