Peace By Peace

Moses Smashing the Tablets of the Law, Rembrandt [Web Gallery of Art]

You must not distort justice: you shall not show partiality; you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes even of the wise and twists the words even of the just. Justice, justice alone shall you pursue, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord, your God, is giving you.

~ Deuteronomy 16:19-20

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit in 1965 [Wikipedia]

“The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war.”
~ Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Diplomat and Politician (1900 – 1990)

In St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Ireland

Every breath that we draw, every thought of our brain, every instant of life proceed from God’s inexhaustible goodness. And if it be pain for a mother to be parted from her child, for a man to be exiled from hearth and home, for friend to be sundered from friend, O think what pain, what anguish, it must be for the poor soul to be spurned from the presence of the supremely good and loving Creator Who has called that soul into existence from nothingness and sustained it in life and loved it with an immeasurable love. This, then, to be separated for ever from its greatest good, from God, and to feel the anguish of that separation, knowing full well that it is unchangeable, this is the bearing, poena damni, the pain of loss.

~ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1882 – 1941) [Wikipedia]

School photo of Anne Frank, 1941[Wikipedia]

I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage. If God lets me live… I shall not remain insignificant, I shall work in the world and for mankind! And now I know that first and foremost I shall require courage and cheerfulness.

– Anne Frank, Witness of the Holocaust (1929 – 1945)

The Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

A dying man asked a dying man for eternal life; a man without possessions asked a poor man for a kingdom . . . In the divine plan it was a thief who was the escort of the King of kings into paradise. If our Lord had come merely as a teacher, the thief would never have asked for forgiveness. But since the thief’s request touched the reason of his coming to earth, namely, to save souls, the thief heard the immediate answer. “I promise thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). It was the thief’s last prayer, perhaps even his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything, and found everything. When even the disciples were doubting and only one was present at the cross, the thief owned and acknowledged him as Savior.

 The Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895 – 1979)

Statue of St Germaine Cousin, Pibrac, France [Wikipedia]

I have what God wished me to have, and I want no more.
~ St Germaine Cousin, Shepherdess (1579 – 1602)

Where is home? Who is my neighbour?

In this video Fr Patrick O’Shea, an Irish Columban based in New Zealand who spent the early years of his priesthood in Mindanao, reflects on the question ‘Where is Home?’ and on the consequence of the answer to that question in relation to another: ‘Who is my neighbour?’