ore
than six months after 9/11, we are still trying to come to terms with the
terrorist attacks of the past months.
We have not suffered such violence in our own land and against our own citizens since the civil war of the 1860’s. No wonder we are confused about what to do to heal wounds. We reached for the obvious answers first. Strike back in violence against the perpetrators of these terrible blows. “Smoke ‘em out!” and “Bring ‘em back dead or alive!” were the rallying cries for a stunned nation. These calls for frontier justice were quickly replaced with more cautious and methodical calls to root out the terrorists and those who lent them support.
But we are already deep enough into the war against terrorism to know that this effort is not going to heal our wounds. Violence against wrong-doers, even when it seems to be justified and necessary, will not salve the wounds that we have suffered. We must do more than avenge ourselves against our enemies to achieve healing. We must be reconciled to our enemies, as difficult and impossible as that still sounds now. Winning a war is never the same thing as establishing peace. Peace takes something harder and stronger than military weaponry and bravery. Isaiah knew that it takes to heal a nation’s wounds: “Releasing those bound unjustly, setting free the oppressed, sharing your bread with th hungry, sheltering the oppressed and homeless, clothing the naked.” When this happens, our wounds will be healed.
We will be like a spring whose water never fails if we remove oppression, lies, and slander, and if we bestow bread, freedom and healing on those in need in our world turned a “global village.”
Have you ever had the experience of hiking in the mountains and coming across a mountain spring? There is nothing so refreshing as bending to the ground and taking a long drink from a clear mountain spring. Of course, the stream may be a runoff from higher altitudes. As the snow melts, the water trickles down the mountainside in well-worn rivulets. Such springs run dry when the snow is frozen solid or melted away. But there is another kind of mountain spring whose water never fails. This is the spring that draws on some deep well or reservoir of water under the ground. These springs flow winter and summer, through rain or drought, because they are supplied by a hidden underground river that never stops flowing.
The prophet Isaiah probably had this kind of spring in mind when he described the life of the person who does loving deeds such as forgiving, speaking the just word, getting involved in issues of justice and peace, caring for the needy, the young, the old, living the gospel values in mission lands,… We will be like a spring whose water never fails if we remove oppression, lies, and slander, and if we bestow bread, freedom and healing on those in need in our world turned a “global village.” That’s the secret of people who give their energies and risk their lives for the betterment of society. Where does a Francis Xavier get the stamina for tireless missionary labors in far away lands? From some underground river of love. Where does a Gandhi get the strength to starve the British Empire into submission? From some underground river of compassion. Where does a Martin Luther King get the courage to undermine legal segregation? From some underground well of justice. People who dare danger in the pursuit of freedom and justice and love are nourished by hidden sources of energy and bravery and grace. They have tapped into springs that never fail and become in them spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4).
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)