September 15, 2001
Dear Sisters,
On this feast of our patron, Mary our Compassionate Mother, I wish to
share some reflections with you. The events of this past week in New York,
Washington and the rural area of Pittsburgh oblige us to enter into an
ever deeper examen of our response to that to which our Chapter Direction
calls us : "To do all we must, to address violence and to restore
right relationships in our Congregation, church and society."
As I pondered the readings for the feasts we celebrate at this season,
various images arose in my heart. It seems as if the "poisonous
serpents" of violence have bitten us and disseminated their poison
throughout the world. The reading for Friday from Numbers, in Jesus’ own
interpretation of the text, affirms that it is only by looking at him,
lifted on the cross that we will "not perish but have eternal
life." We look on our world and see the suffering Christ in those who
died recently and in so many of our brothers and sisters around the globe.
Our reflections over the past few years on the compassion of Mary, as told
by our own sisters from different countries, widen our horizons. We become
ever more aware that it is impossible to characterize ourselves as
nonviolent and others as violent; ourselves as civilized, others as
uncivilized. We are all responsible insofar as we hold any violence in our
hearts.
In March 2000, we began our response to our Chapter Direction with an
invitation to reflect on the various ways in which violence is present in
our own hearts, in our lives, in our country, in our world. I invited you
to make some specific commitment to nonviolence and to share your
commitment with someone else in order to strengthen your resolve in this
deep need of our individual and communal lives. I urge you now to reflect
again on what you chose to do, to retrieve it from its hiding place or
take up a new commitment if you cannot remember its contents, and to renew
your determination to live in some specific way the Chapter’s invitation
to nonviolence.
Any act of such magnitude as we experienced in this country this past
week begs us to ask and to answer the question "Why?" Why so
much concentrated violence? Why so much hatred in our world? As we try to
answer this question let us be mindful of the many ways in which people
everywhere suffer from the institutionalized violence which silently
oppresses so many everyday. The chronic unemployment due to World Trade
Organization rules, the violence of poverty and hunger in many countries
which kills thousands of children daily, the Structural Adjustment
Programs
imposed on poor nations by the IMF, violence against women and children in
the home and through sex trading, the military control imposed on citizens
through the sale and purchase of arms, the pollution of air and water due
to uncontrolled consumption and destructive habits of life are some
examples.
When we reflect seriously on these and other kinds of violence, we come
to the awareness that no person, no nation is innocent of the massive
destruction of life that occurs every day around us. It would seem that,
as the gospel tells us in another section, this "demon can only be
thrown out by prayer and fasting." The tragic loss of life in the
past few days calls us to pray that our nation find nonviolent responses
to that which threatens us. We are called as well to fast from any desire
for revenge or retaliation in our own lives, and to act in ways which lead
us to a constant practice of nonviolence in our relationships with
ourselves, with others and with our universe.
Let us join our prayers and efforts for a nonviolent world with the
prayers and efforts of peoples of all faiths and with all people of good
will. Even "if we do not know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit
intercedes with sighs too deep for words." Our faith in the promise
of Jesus that what we ask for all be granted are the foundation of our
hope as we continue to work and pray for the coming of God’s reign in
our midst.
Sincerely,
