Behold the Nonviolent One

THE RUSSIAN MYSTIC ST. SERAPHIM WRITES, "IF YOU have inner peace, thousands of people around you will be saved." St. Seraphim makes it sound so simple. Yet all of us know that to become a person who radiates such intense beams of redemptive peace is not a simple task. It takes, in fact, a lifetime of concentration to become a true peacemaker, a peacemaker like the one described in this story.

It is said that when the Chinese invaded Tibet, many of the soldiers were very cruel toward the conquered people. They were especially harsh and mean-spirited toward the monks. When the Chinese invaders arrived at one village, the village leader approached them and said, 'All of the monks, hearing of your approach, fled to the mountains ... all of the monks, that is, but one.'

The commander raged out of control. He marched to the monastery, kicked in the gate, and sure enough, in the courtyard stood the one remaining monk. The commander approached the monk and screamed, 'Do you know who I am? I am he who can run you through with a sword without batting an eyelash.'

The monk gently, but steadily, gazed at the commander and replied, 'And do you know who I am? I am he who can let you run me through with a sword without batting an eyelash.'

The monk is my model of a peacemaker. Behold the nonviolent one: disarmed, centered, vulnerable, detached, unafraid of death.

The question the monk poses for us is this: How do we become people of peace? How do we become a church of nonviolence? What experiences in life, what methods of prayer prepare us to stand disarmed? Jesus, I think, shows us a way to become a people of peace.

In the Sermon on the Mount he offered the beatitudes as steps toward a disarmed heart. The beatitudes, in other words, might be seen as a series of stages that Christians must pass through if their spirituality is to mature and deepen to the point of total disarmament.

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

THE FIRST BEATITUDE, THE BEGINNING OF THE SPIRITUAL journey is, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." To be poor in spirit means that you can say in truth, "I am a worm and nothing." To be poor in spirit means that you can say in truth, "I am God." Or as the rabbis in the Hassidic movement teach, we should all have two pockets. In one is the message, "I am dust and ashes." In the other is, "For me the universe was made."

The spiritual journey begins with this beatitude, or it never begins at all. The spiritual journey begins with awakening to what it means to be human. To become aware of creaturehood is to grasp this tale: I walked up to an old, old monk and asked him, "What is the audacity of humility?" The old man answered, "The audacity of humility is to be the first to say, 'I love you.'"

God is audaciously humble. God is the first to say, "I love you."

Awakening to gratuitous love is ground zero in the spiritual life. Oh, wonder of wonders! God first loved me. God made a unilateral initiative. I did not merit this gift: to be made by love and in love. In a sense, the miracle of being a beloved of God, a child of God, is an insight from which the mystics never fully recover. "Just to be is blessing, just to live is holy," exclaims Rabbi Heschel. To be poor in spirit, then, is to know my dignity as a child of God and to recognize the same God in my brothers and sisters.

Blessed Are They Who Mourn

THIS GROWING AWARENESS of the sacredness of all life plunges the follower of Christ into the second beatitude, "Blessed are they who mourn."

It is one thing to wax poetic about the sacredness of life, another to plant your feet on earth, 1989. It is no exaggeration to image the world as a gaping wound. The church pictures it in more poetic terms: a vale of tears.

Some of the sorrow is beyond our control, but the more we analyze the stories behind the newspaper headlines, the harder it is to hide from harsh reality. Our apathy, our lifestyles, our budget priorities mean mourning and weeping for tens of millions around the globe.

Some friends returned from a Third World experience with this story:

Marta, our hostess, was a hollow woman. Thirty years old, mother of seven, alone, uneducated, despairing; she made blouses to pay for last week's food. Lorenzo, her man, visited her, drunk, when it suited him. Water is in the faucet two hours a day, and people stand in line for hours waiting for it. The children have parasites.

One of us asked her, "Marta, what has been the happiest event in your life?" And she had no answer. She had no answer. Finally, after a long, long time, she said, "Maybe when it ends."

Truly, for one who recognizes infinity behind every human face, the silent tears of Marta must slowly turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Take Marta and multiply her by a hundred million. Then meditate on the words of Cuban writer Jose Marti: "When others are weeping blood, what right have I to weep tears?"

To mourn the disfigured face of God is not enough. We must also learn to walk through this bitter valley and make it a valley of springs. Somehow we must immerse ourselves in the turmoil and tears, enter deeply into the pain, and yet walk lightly through it, leaving a wellspring behind.

The poor in spirit -- those who recognize the sacredness of life -- and they who mourn -- those who realize the violence under which so many live -- face a dilemma: How do we restore dignity, how do we bring wholeness to those denied basic human rights? How do we bring forth that day "when every tear shall be wiped away and death shall be no more, neither shall there be crying nor pain anymore"?

Blessed Are the Gentle

SOME, OF COURSE, advocate violence to right the wrongs. But the beatitudes suggest an alternative, another way to engage in the struggle. And that alternative is the third beatitude, "Blessed are the gentle."

Another translation for this beatitude is "Blessed are those who do not use force." The next step in the spiritual journey, then, is the invitation to nonviolence.

The spiritual power of nonviolence is what Mohandas K. Gandhi called "soul force," while the Christian speaks of a "power of love" that can overcome the world. To accept the invitation to nonviolence is to begin living out of a disarmed heart. The beatitudes that follow this one suggest or explain what is involved in the nonviolent way of life.

Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst For Justice

THE FOURTH BEATITUDE, the one immediately after the invitation to nonviolence, is, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice."

This beatitude reminds us that nonviolent love is always other-centered and public; nonviolence takes place in the streets as well as in the cell of one's own heart. To begin the journey of nonviolence is to find oneself hungering and thirsting after justice and being drawn actively to resist any system or government that diminishes life.

This is where the Catholic bishops of the Philippines found themselves after the fraudulent Marcos elections. In a statement ringing with extraordinary clarity and courage, they called an entire nation to resistance, endorsing a protest campaign that included prayer and fasting, boycotts, vigils, strikes, walkouts, demonstrations, and civil disobedience. Who will ever forget "People Power" and hundreds of thousands on their knees, facing guns and tanks, armed only with rosary beads, Mary statues, and flowers?

If ever you need to explain the fourth beatitude, bring the Filipino people to mind. To hunger and thirst for justice is to take concrete action. It is an active refusal to submit to injustice and an active showing of love.

Blessed Are the Merciful

IT IS ONE THING TO RESIST THE STRUCTURES OF VIOLENCE AND quite another to serve the victims of institutional violence. That is why the next beatitude, "Blessed are the merciful," moves the spiritual journey to another level.

Nonviolent love includes unconditional love, a willingness to serve others without counting the cost. It involves a total pouring out of self, a day-by-day dying to our own agendas, timetables, dreams, plans, and priorities.

About 17 years ago, I was part of a group that opened a center for nonviolence. At first we thought nonviolence meant sponsoring seminars and workshops on the topic and organizing nonviolent actions against the war system.

But it wasn't until we started a soup kitchen and began welcoming the homeless into our lives that we began to understand the implications of the nonviolent cross. I would be less than honest if I didn't admit that direct service to the poor is the one element of nonviolence that I struggle with constantly. That said, I must insist that the most important thing I've learned over the past 10 years is this: Some direct contact with the poor is indispensable for those who call themselves peacemakers.

First, it is imperative to have some kind of presence next to the "least" of God's children if we are going to speak to others about peace and justice with any credibility. More important than giving us public credibility and a sense of personal integrity, though, is what the poor will teach us about ourselves and, consequently, about God.

It is in rubbing shoulders with the poor, the marginal, the lonely, that our nonviolence is tested as gold in fire. The words of Jean Vanier warn of a danger all too prevalent among peace and justice professionals: "Is not one of our problems today that we have separated ourselves from the poor and the wounded and the suffering? We have too much time to discuss and theorize and have lost the yearning for God which comes when we are faced with the sufferings of people."

Blessed Are the Pure of Heart

THE NEXT BEATITUDE, "BLESSED ARE THE PURE OF HEART," comes as a surprise. Here we thought action -- signing petitions, marching in the streets, writing letters to government officials, and even committing civil disobedience -- would make us peacemakers. We thought serving soup to the hungry and preparing beds for the homeless would bring in the reign of God. Instead, we discover that all the killing and destruction, all the pain and screams, only reflect our inner violence, our own lack of inner peace.

What a startling insight: Conversion of heart must accompany conversion of the world. The problem is purity of heart. Now we must wrestle with the demons within. The words of Thomas Merton haunt us: "Instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and women, and love God above all else. Instead of hating all the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and disorders in your own soul which are the causes of war."

It is through daily conversion, through fasting and solitude, that we grow in truth. We become radically honest with ourselves and others, meeting face to face all the lies and fears, hatred and harm that spring from self-righteousness and pride.

Gradually, we grow in understanding of the person we truly are in God's sight. The film that covers the eye of our heart completely dissolves and we can see each man and woman as they are in the eyes of God. The beauty of that reality is blinding. Everywhere we look, we behold the face of God. Mechtild of Magdeburg gives us a glimpse into the pure of heart when she writes, "The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw all things in God and God in all things."

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

FROM THIS CONTEMPLATIVE VISION FLOWS THE NEXT BEATITUDE, "Blessed are the peacemakers."

They are called children of God, those who recognize the unity of the human family. One who is pure of heart, one who sees the face of God in every human being cannot injure, cannot kill, cannot comprehend the term "enemy." One who sees the whole world in a single ray of light cannot speak of nation states or superior races or inferior sexes. The peacemaker has a single vocation: to keep the vision of oneness, of wholeness, of unity, of God's unconditional love for all alive in the marketplace.

Wherever there is injustice, discrimination, division, discord, violence, we should find peacemakers, God's children. Where the battle rages between the forces of light and darkness, we should find peacemakers, God's children. And God's children enter the public arena, the conflict, trying to make God's love visible.

This means that we love our enemies as ourselves, we accept suffering without retaliation, we meet hatred with love. "Rivers of blood may have to flow before we gain our freedom," Gandhi told his followers, "but it must be our blood."

Blessed Are the Persecuted

THIS FINAL THOUGHT BRINGS US BACK TO THE FOOT OF THE cross and to the final beatitude, the final stage of the spiritual journey: "Blessed are those persecuted for justice's sake."

Suffering love first attracted me to nonviolence. In the early '60s -- before Vatican II and renewal -- I can remember watching the evening news, staring transfixed at the blacks who sat at segregated lunch counters and refused to move until they were served, while angry whites poured ketchup on their heads, smeared mustard through their hair and eyes, and pelted them with racial slurs.

I heard the word "nonviolence" and wondered how people could absorb such hatred without striking back. Then I read an account in the Catholic Worker newspaper where a black man was quoted as saying: "I will let them kick me and kick me until they have kicked all the hatred out of themselves and into my own body, where I will transform it into love."

That unidentified black man let me see the cross of Jesus anew. No longer was it possible to see the death of Jesus as a mere historical event, a dogma of faith to adhere to but never connect to real life. No, the disarmed figure on the cross was an invitation to me to break the cycle of violence, to be an instrument of continuing redemption through suffering love.

A seeker, it is said, searched for years to know the secret of achievement and meaning in human life. One night in a dream a Holy One appeared, bearing the answer to the secret. The sage said simply, "Stretch out your hand and reach what you can."

"No, it can't be that, " said the seeker. "It must be something harder, something more satisfying to the human spirit." The sage replied softly, "You are right, it is something harder. It is this: stretch out your hand and reach what you cannot."

Can we reach for something harder, something more satisfying to the human spirit? Are we ready to risk the gospel? Can we chance all we are on the beatitudes? Can we follow the nonviolent Jesus? Dare we -- all of us together -- stretch out our hands and reach what we cannot?

Mary Lou Kownacki, O.S.B., was a Sojourners contributing editor and the national coordinator of Pax Christi when this article appeared.