Christians must always give peace a chance. We side with the poor, the broken, the oppressed, because that is what our Savior tells us to do. Read the Bible and you cannot miss the special concern for the alien, the poor, the widow, the orphan, and those oppressed.
We are a faith born in solidarity with the oppressed.
Visions can convert Emperors and in this splendid moment, Christians can build enduring civilizations. Our beautiful cathedrals, cities, and cultures are built and then often despoiled by other religions, philosophies, and tyrants. All is well, because we have created science, hospitals, colleges. All end up in other hands eventually, but we endure even if as second class citizens in cultures we built (see Turkey). The merciful, the forgiving, the loving inherit the Earth. When we “win,” we worry that success will corrupt us, because success does. When we “lose,” we are not disheartened, because the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.
We know there are worse things than losing in this life. Only the penitent, the humble, will see the face of God. There are two voices that must harmonize to hear the voice of God in the image of God: male and female. The radical feminist who thinks men and women are interchangeable in all roles is deeply incompatible with Our Lord and Our Lady as understood by Christians from Aksum to Britain, but the reaction to this anthropological heresy is often worse. The swagger of the boastful man is antithetical to the Christian gentleman or lady who serves Our Lady. Our model is always the first Christian, the humble Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Mary:
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;
49 for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 And his mercy is on those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm,
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
52 he has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his posterity for ever.”
Those in low estate will be exalted. The proud, the tyrants, petty and great, will be defeated in part due to the futility of their fantasies. The tyrant forms a cult of personality, but God is so great that every other person fades away. They are great in their time, Alexander, Napoleon, and then they are gone. The tyrant becomes the subject of historians, the good God and the mother of God, is always daily news.
Why?
Our Lady sides with the Omnipotence and the good God loves justice.
The poor are exalted, the rich are cast down. The Mother of God has given us a prophetic word, a hard word, a fierce truth, that casts down every petty dictator or cult of personality. She was given a chance to consent or to refuse consent and she sided with God. The Madonna is always losing to someone, but someone new. She defeats foes by enduring, saying “yes” to God, and no to tyrants. The colonialist and the slaver is always defeated in God’s court. The colonized and the enslaved are exalted. That is justice. Just now the immorality of the moral colonialists infects the world, but despite the propaganda (in the form of popular culture) and the pressure (usually money), the truth will endure. The virtuous man, mocked and ignored, will endure as a gentleman and so be greater in God’s sight than those who think they are “winning.”
Most Christians, in most places, at most times have not been pacifists, yet if we think too much about how we are not too proud to fight we will miss an important point: any Christian must default to peace. Now that countries have weapons of mass destruction, enough to destroy all life, the case for certain kinds of war is even more questionable. We cannot destroy the world to save civilization.
The humble man will ride to rescue Vienna under the banner of the Black Madonna.
The sycophant will tell any lie to keep power.
Better to die than to tell a lie. The good God will win regardless of our defeat in this present moment! Like Nina, equal to the Apostles, or Blessed Elizabeth, new martyr, let us keep the faith, tell the truth, and live in reality.
Peace is the end we seek, humility the posture that will get us there.
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