Man Praying, Van Gogh, 1883
Private Collection [Web Gallery of Art]
Do you seriously believe that such horrors are indispensable to a man who wants to do what I want to do: give peace to poor creatures and reconcile them to their existence on earth?
– Vincent van Gogh, Artist (1853 – 1890)
Entertaining Angels: the Dorothy Day Story
Martin Sheen plays Peter Maurin in this movie.
The world would become better off
if people tried to become better.
And people would become better
if they stopped trying to be better off.
– Peter Maurin, Co-founder of the Catholic Worker (1877 – 1949)
Humanly speaking, we could understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience, not interpreting it or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his word. He does not mean that it is to be discussed as an ideal; he really means us to get on with it.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 February 1909 – executed 9 April 1945), The Cost of Discipleship
PEACE BY PEACE |
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Photo caption – Pope Francis, 13 December 2015, opening the Holy Door in the Basilica of St John Lateran. |
Sincerely I learned about her, and ungrudgingly do I share— ~ Wisdom 7:13-14 ~ |
Gandhi, with a French interpreter
‘Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.’
― Mahatma Gandhi
Pope Francis in Brazil during World Youth Day 2013[Wikipedia]
‘I think also of the living conditions of many migrants who, in their dramatic odyssey, experience hunger, are deprived of freedom, robbed of their possessions, or undergo physical and sexual abuse. In a particular way, I think of those among them who, upon arriving at their destination after a gruelling journey marked by fear and insecurity, are detained in at times inhumane conditions. I think of those among them, who for different social, political and economic reasons, are forced to live clandestinely. My thoughts also turn to those who, in order to remain within the law, agree to disgraceful living and working conditions, especially in those cases where the laws of a nation create or permit a structural dependency of migrant workers on their employers, as, for example, when the legality of their residency is made dependent on their labour contract. Yes, I am thinking of “slave labour”.’
‘If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.’
-Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Pope Benedict XVI, 2007 [Wikipedia]
‘Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a “commandment” imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is “divine” because it comes from God and unites us to God . . .’
And the more we love each other, the more we should give of ourselves to one another until it hurts. We cannot say, ‘I love God, but I don’t love my neighbor’. St John tells us that he who says he loves God but not his neighbor, is a liar. How can you love God who you do not see, if you don’t love the neighbour who you do see- the neighbour you know and live with every day?
