Blessed are the Peacemakers

Peace is the rudimentary necessity of any religion and thus to be a religious person is to inherently be a peacemaker. Today we observe the International Day of Prayer for Peace especially as a gesture of solidarity with the victims of violence in the onslaught of Israel and Palestine. As Christ promises, to be a peacemaker is to be blessed and to be worthy of being called the child of God (Matt 5:9). Peace cannot be achieved through laxity and complacency but through sheer determination and persistence. Peace also cannot be achieved without disrupting the prevailing order. Jesus the Christ whom we call the Prince of Peace has himself shown that the endeavours for peace are disruptive.

The vocation of Peace is a faith imperative. For Israel and Palestine peace is still a distant dream. What we find ubiquitously pervasive in these states is the dreadful shadow of violence. Violence, whether physical, structural, psychological or in whichever form it expresses itself, is a denial and abuse of life. Robert McAfee Brown’s (Religion and Violence: 1987) explanation of violence seems appropriate to be mentioned here:

Whatever ‘violates’ another, in the sense of infringing upon or disregarding or abusing or denying that other, whether physical harm is done or not, can be understood as an act of violence…. While such a denial or violation can involve the physical destruction of personhood in ways that are obvious, personhood can also be violated or denied in subtle ways that are not obvious at all, except to the victim. There can be violation of personhood quite apart from the doing of physical harm.

The journey towards Peace is not simply a journey but a pilgrimage. The God whom we believe is a journeying God; a God who desires to pitch tents for the ease of moving frequently and embracing as many as possible. Fr. Ioan through his article “The Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace – An Ecumenical Paradigm for our Times: An Orthodox Viewpoint” challenges the overarching understanding of the word pilgrimage as a concept of travelling to a holy place with the expectation of receiving certain spiritual or even soteriological benefits. To the contrary, he says pilgrimage is the very demand of being a Christian; a journey that God has called us to undertake in doing God’s will for the final consummation. He summarizes his thoughts through a credible Orthodox theological framework;

God has a perichoretic existence. This is expressed through an eternal intra-cohabitation, inter-relation and inter-penetration within the one essence, a moving around but always together, metaphorically expressed even as an ongoing Divine dance. This existence is a journeying and acting together in all manifestations of God’s oikonomia for the world, but always with kenotic humility, pointing and affirming the other.

Our affirmation that God is a Trinitarian union corroborates the fact that through the mutually indwelling relation between the three persons of trinity the basic nature of God exemplified is peace. True peace is only when the margins acquire peace.

Wati Longchar through his article “A Pilgrimage Together with the People in the Margins – for Justice and Peace” argues that the people do not live in the margins by choice rather they are forced to live by the powerful and their hegemonic ideologies. Disabled, Queer communities, the Key affected persons of HIV and AIDS, indigenous people, Migrant Workers, Dalits, and women are the people who have to bear the brunt of the dominants. Taking the birth narrative of Jesus as the frame of reference he considers margin to be the site where God reveals Godself. God is usually encountered in unexpected locations. He also brings the transformative and healing power of the margins by analyzing how the nameless girl became a source of healing for Namaan (2 Kings 5: 1 - 19). The narrative says that Namaan was healed when he washed in the river of Jordan. River of Jordan was the river where the poor washed their bodies. Namaan had to wash in the river where the poor washed themselves to be healed. It was in solidarity with the people he could find healing. The article also enlightens with the sad reality that the indigenous communities are the worst affected by the polities of market capitalism. The natural resources are colonized and the people are rendered homeless. Countering all these, margins become the site from where resistance springs. He writes;

Margin is a theological principle that critiques all the dominant value systems that dehumanize, exclude and push some people to marginality. It calls the powerful and the privileged to repentance. It critiques cultures, traditions, and theology that justify and nurture unjust institutions advocating marginality as a part of the divine creation. Journeying together with the people in the margins for justice and peace requires listening to their testimonies, pain, and suffering. Their stories become the voice of God.

This World Week for peace in Palestine and Israel and especially today as we observe the International Day of Prayer for Peace may we join hands and pledge to be peacemakers wherever and however we could be. I conclude with the words of Judith Butler “Peace is resistance to the terrible satisfactions of war”

Prayers

Dn. Basil Paul