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Following Jesus on the Path of Nonviolence

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Following Jesus on the Path of Nonviolence LENTEN REFLECTIONS 2016 Following Jesus on the Path of Nonviolence Practicing Gospel Nonviolence and Seeking God’s Reign of Justice and Peace by John Dear Education for Justice, project of Center of Concern !1 CONTENT A Note from Rev. John Dear 2 About Rev. John Dear 3 Ash Wednesday, February 10, 2016 4 - 7 First Sunday of Lent, February 14, 2016 8 -12 Second Sunday of Lent, February 21, 2016 13 - 16 Third Sunday of Lent, February 28, 2016 17 - 20 Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 6, 2016 21 - 24 Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 13, 2016 25 - 28 Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, March 20, 2016 29 - 32 Holy Thursday, March 24, 2016 33 - 36 Good Friday, March 25, 2016 37 - 42 Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016 43 - 46 Second Sunday of Easter, April 3, 2016 47 - 50 Center of Concern 1225 Otis Street, N.E. Washington, DC 20017 USA +1 (202)! 635-2757, ext. 132 [email protected] www.educationforjustice.org Center of Concern researches, educates and advocates from Catholic social tradition to create a world where economic, political, and cultural systems promote sustainable flourishing of the global community. Founded 1971. Copyright © 2016, Center of Concern. www.coc.org !2 Dear Friends, Peace be with you! This Lent, I invite you, along with our friends at Education for Justice and Center of Concern, to reflect on the nonviolence of Jesus as he walks from Galilee to Jerusalem and proclaims God’s reign of justice and peace. We offer you these reflections in the hope that you might use this holy season as a time to renounce violence, practice nonviolence toward yourself and all others, renew your commitment to the grassroots movement of justice and peace, and make new strides on your discipleship journey with Jesus to the God of peace. “Nonviolence is the greatest and most active force in the world,” Gandhi once wrote. “One person who can express nonviolence in life exercises a force superior to all the forces of brutality. My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. The more you develop it in your own being, the more infectious it becomes till it overwhelms your surroundings and by and by might oversweep the world.” Gandhi considered Jesus the most active person of nonviolence in the history of the world, and believed that Jesus’ nonviolence continues to disarm and transform all of us. He thought it was the only hope for humanity. But he insisted that Christians need to go back to the Gospels, relearn the nonviolence of Jesus, and start practicing it in their own lives and engaging with it in the world. That’s what I hope we can do during this holy season of Lent. For each of the Sunday and holy day readings, I offer reflections on the Gospel passages, plus reflection questions, a prayer, and action suggestions. You will notice, too, that I offer one extra week, the second Sunday after Easter, to keep us going on the journey of resurrection peace in the footsteps of the nonviolent Jesus. My hope and prayer is that these reflections will help you to go deeper into Gospel nonviolence, renew your discipleship to the nonviolent Jesus, and recommit yourself to the long haul work of the grassroots movements for justice and disarmament. May we become, like Gandhi and King, apostles, disciples, prophets, teachers, and missionaries of Gospel nonviolence, and fulfill our vocations to be peacemakers, God’s beloved sons and daughters. May the God of peace bless you abundantly! Fr. John Dear !3 2 About Rev. John Dear “John Dear is the embodiment of a peacemaker,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote a few years ago when he nominated John for the Nobel Peace Prize. “He has led by example through his actions and in his writings and in numerous sermons, speeches and demonstrations. He believes that peace is not something static, but rather to make peace is to be engaged, mind, body and spirit. His teaching is to love yourself, to love your neighbor, your enemy, and to love the world and to understand the profound responsibility in doing all of these. He is a man who has the courage of his convictions and who speaks out and acts against war, the manufacture of weapons and any situation where a human being might be at risk through violence. For evil to prevail requires only that good people sit on the sidelines and do nothing. John Dear is compelling all of us to stand up and take responsibility for the suffering of humanity so often caused through selfishness and greed.” John Dear has spent over three decades speaking to people around the world about the Gospel of Jesus, the way of nonviolence and the call to make peace. A Catholic priest, he has served as the director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest interfaith peace organization in the United States, and after September 11, 2001, as one of the Red Cross coordinators of chaplains at the Family Assistance Center, and counseled thousands of relatives and rescue workers. He has worked in homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and community centers; traveled in war zones around the world, including Iraq, Palestine, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, India, and Colombia; lived in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Northern Ireland; been arrested over 75 times in acts of civil disobedience against war; and spent eight months in prison for a Plowshares disarmament action. In the 1990s, he arranged for Mother Teresa to speak to various governors to stop the death penalty. He has two Master’s Degrees in Theology from the Graduate Theological Union in California, and has taught theology at Fordham University. John Dear has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Sun, National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and elsewhere. For many years, he wrote a weekly blog for the National Catholic Reporter, and is featured regularly on the national radio show “Democracy Now!” and the Huffington Post. He is the subject of the DVD documentary, “The Narrow Path” (with music by Joan Baez and Jackson Browne) and is profiled in John Dear On Peace, by Patti Normile (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2009). His thirty books, including Living Peace, The Nonviolent Life, Lazarus Come Forth, The God of Peace, Jesus the Rebel, Disarming the Heart, Peace Behind Bars, The Questions of Jesus, You Will Be My Witnesses, Our God Is Nonviolent, The Sound of Listening, Seeds of Nonviolence, Walking the Way, Thomas Merton Peacemaker, Transfiguration, Mary of Nazareth, and his autobiography, A Persistent Peace, have been translated into ten languages. He has edited books about Daniel Berrigan, Mohandas Gandhi, Mairead Maguire, Henri Nouwen, Richard McSorley, and Horace McKenna. John Dear is on the staff of Pace e Bene and organizes a national week of action for justice and peace every September called “Campaign Nonviolence.” See: www.campaignnonviolence.org. A former Jesuit, he was ordained in 1993 and is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Monterey, California. Currently, he lives in New Mexico. For information or to invite John to speak in your church or school, visit: www.johndear.org. !4 3 ASH WEDNESDAY REFLECTION February 10, 2016 Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to your God for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment. Perhaps he will again relent and leave behind a blessing. (Joel 2:12-18) “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites… When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” (Matthew 6:4-6) !5 4 Mahatma Gandhi said that Jesus was the most active person of nonviolence in the history of the world, and yet the only people in the whole world who don’t know that Jesus is nonviolent are Christians. The holy season of Lent is a time to reclaim and practice the nonviolence of Jesus. This year, “I’m committed during these forty days, I invite us to renounce our violence to nonviolence and our complicity with systemic injustice and practice active nonviolence. I invite us to use this time wisely to grow in absolutely. nonviolence so that we might better follow Jesus all the way to the cross and the new life of resurrection peace. We want to I’m just not going be faithful to the nonviolence of Jesus for the rest of our lives. to kill anybody, So this Lent, let’s be intentional, disciplined, and studious whether it’s in about Gospel nonviolence. These weekly writings, based on the Lenten Sunday and holy day Gospel readings, will focus on Vietnam or here. the themes of violence and nonviolence, that we might I’m not going become more nonviolent, better followers of the nonviolent Jesus, and do our part in the nonviolent struggle for justice, to burn down disarmament, and peace. any building. The night before he was killed, Martin Luther King, Jr. told If nonviolent the Memphis crowd, “The choice is no longer violence or nonviolence; it’s nonviolence or non-existence.” He said unless protest fails, every human being becomes nonviolent and works for a I will continue nonviolent world, we are doomed to our self-destructive violence. This is what we pledge to work on this Lent. to preach it As we begin, we note the dire predicament of the world today: and teach it. thirty wars being fought; 810 million people starving; almost I plan to stand four billion people in extreme poverty; as well as torture, executions, racism, sexism, drone attacks, unparalleled by nonviolence corporate greed, 16,000 nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction.
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