BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

I began my day devotionally by reading from Thomas Merton.  Merton was a Trappist monk, author, and peace activist, who wrote prolifically about such subjects as prayer, the interior life, social responsibility, and war, to name but a few.  He is today regarded by many as a spiritual master, a man who exemplified the quest for God and a deeper humanity.  I want to share with you what he had to say about praying for peace.  I found it stunning.

What is the use of postmarking our mail with exhortations to “pray for peace” and then spending billions of dollars on nuclear submarines, thermonuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles?  …consider the utterly fabulous amount of money, planning, energy, anxiety which  go into the production of weapons which almost immediately become obsolete and have to be scrapped.  Contrast all this with the pitiful little gesture “pray for peace” piously canceling our stamps!  Think , too, of  the disproportion between our piety and the enormous act of murderous destruction which we at the same time countenance without compunction and without shame!  It does not even seem to enter our minds that there might be some incongruity in praying to the God of peace, the God Who told us to love one another as He had loved us, Who warned us that they who took the sword would perish by it, and at the same time planning to annihilate not thousands but millions of civilians and soldiers, men, women, and children without discrimnation, even with the almost infallible certainy of inviting the same annihilation for ourselves!

It may make sense for a man to  pray for health and then take medicine, but I fail to see any sense at all in his praying for health and then drinking poison.   (A Thomas Merton Reader, edited by Thomas McDonnell, Doubleday, 1974).

Filed under: Blogging Toward Sunday