By Henrita Frost, SSND
Sometimes when I am meditating in our Mary of the Angels Chapel I take some time with our seven impressive stained glass windows. Each window holds the shape of the cross with a distinctive center and they follow the chakra colors. Overtime I have developed stories about the centers.
This time my attention focused on the indigo window and its center that I describe as a swirling universe – spinning to where?
With trepidation I wonder, is it for the sake of a culture of life, or for a culture of death – or a culture of compassion, or a culture of violence. Or perhaps it is simultaneously doing both, the intermingling of life and death, compassion and violence.
Moments of life hardly pass when we are not shattered by episodes of violence occurring in several places in our global community at the very same moment. Utterly overwhelming, and perhaps we even turn away from hearing the news.
We can feel hopeless, even helpless. Yet, we do know in our hearts, and believe that a culture of compassion, mercy and love exist in our sisters and brothers everywhere in our global community.
During April of this year, there was a gathering in Rome about Nonviolence and Just Peace. One of the conveners of the meeting was Pax Christi International, a Catholic Peace Movement.
Pax Christi USA invites people to consider a vow to practice the nonviolence of Jesus for a year at a time which includes nonviolence of tongue and heart.
As we each pause and remember our local community, our home, our family, our neighbors, our place of comfort and joy: a question may come, what am I called to promise/vow for the sake of a culture of life, of mercy, of compassion? What are we called to promise/vow together?
The ending of the reflection from Pax Christi International includes this sentence: “In every age, the Holy Spirit graces the Church with the wisdom to respond to the challenges of its time, in response to the global epidemic of violence, which Pope Francis has labeled a “world war in installments”, we are being called to invoke, pray over, teach and take decisive action.”
So together let’s –
Trust and Dare to act
Transformation is our work
Now is the moment