The peace briefcase

The horror of war once again challenges every human being on the planet. If it were in our power to end the conflicts in Israel, Ukraine, Sudan or Burkina Faso... Would we do it? And why don't we start by bringing peace to our own wars?

And the fact is that everyone, even the most pacifist, is in a state of permanent war; because it is not necessary to take up arms to hate, to kill a person in our heart: I am not the one who exaggerates in comparing murder with simple iniquity, but a Galileo who, back in the first century, affirmed: "You have heard that it was said to the ancestors: "Thou shalt not kill"; and he who kills shall be condemned before the tribunal. But I say unto you, Whosoever shall be angry with his brother shall be guilty before the judgment seat".

And there is no war between nations that did not begin with a simple bad gesture between two, with a slight, with a small envy or with a presumption out of reality. Those small seeds of evil that took root one day in one or two people germinated among the members of the families closest to those involved, then took root in their villages, then sprouted violently at the national level, until sometimes they extended their branches on a global scale. In each of us, thousands of these apparently harmless seeds nest in each of us, but in certain breeding grounds, they have the potential to reproduce, like viruses, at an astonishing speed.

That is why God, who knows us best, because he created us and because he became one of us in order to experience our every last feeling, demanded through his Son that his disciples turn the other cheek and love their enemies. And he fulfilled this to its ultimate consequences.

It is regrettable to contemplate how in our apparently advanced societies violence grows disproportionately in families, in schools, in health centers, in traffic... Behind the false illusion of exchanging God for a progress that would make us freer, richer and with fewer problems, entire generations are now discovering only smoke.

We are increasingly slaves of the powerful, who control even the time we go to the bathroom thanks to cell phones; artificial intelligence, in the hands of those same few, will plunge a large part of today's professionals into poverty; and the essential problem of human beings, which is to feel loved forever, has not been solved by the sexual revolution that has reduced love to a passing infatuation. So, of course, people are upset.

In his latest apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum the pope points to the technocratic paradigm as the culprit for many of today's problems, including environmental ones: "we have made impressive and astonishing technological progress, and we do not realize that at the same time we have become highly dangerous beings, capable of endangering the lives of many beings and our own survival. It is worth repeating today Soloviev's irony: "A century so advanced that it was also the last". It takes lucidity and honesty to recognize in time that our power and the progress we generate are turning against ourselves".

The ideological polarization encouraged by a self-referential political class that rarely seems to work for the common good, promotes confrontation between people who, in another climate, would undoubtedly be open to dialogue and consensus.

Even within the Catholic Church, sides arise that, far from proposing the legitimate improvements that are believed to be necessary, fuel personal attacks on those who do not think as I do, with inflammatory language and with the intention of hurting people.

If we defend an ecclesial position together with our friends and against those who are not like us, what are we doing extraordinary? -Jesus would tell us, "Don't the Gentiles do the same?

It is said that the presidents of the great nuclear powers always carry a briefcase with them from which they can order the launching of their missiles.

We also carry a much more powerful briefcase, the briefcase of peace, the Gospel, which teaches us not to return evil for evil, but to overcome it by force of good, because every war is a defeat. Jesus used it on the night he was captured and told Peter to keep his sword in its sheath.

It is so easy to cry out against other people's wars and so difficult to be a firewall in the one we are engaged in! If God makes the sun rise for the good and the bad, who am I to say bad things about others, to say that my life is more valuable than theirs?

Only the sincere prayer of the Our Father, which brings me face to face with those who are more than I am and with those who are my equals, is capable of putting me in my place and of leading me to hate only the confrontation with my brothers, every war that only comes to end with myself and with humanity.

This is the same as the Pope expresses in his conclusion of Laudate DeumPraise God" is the name of this letter. For a human being who pretends to take the place of God becomes the worst danger to himself".