What Does Christ Ask of Me?

Retreat leader Brad Wolf, editor of Philip Berrigan’s Ministry of Risk: Writings on Peace and Nonviolence, energized the 25 peacemakers who braved unexpected snow and jackknifed tractor trailers on April 12 at St. Thomas the Apostle parish in Palmer for our Pax Christi Massachusetts retreat, “Hope for the Long Haul.”  

After fellowship and refreshments, a warm welcome from St. Thomas pastor, Rick Turner, land acknowledgement, and opening prayer, Brad introduced us to Phil.

“In our time more than ever we need story for hope and resistance,” he said.  “Phil Berrigan was the author of his own story, which led him to his life of resistance.”  He lived resistance and hope from the 50’s till his death in 2002.

A brief chronology

Son of a socialist father and Catholic Worker disciple mother, he devoured books and learned justice.  As a soldier in World War II, he began to question the validity of war.  He also met African American fellow soldiers and became aware of the depth of racism in America.  He made the connection between racism, materialism, and militarism, looking “behind the curtain” to discern who wins, who loses, and why.  Impressed by his brother Dan’s life as a Jesuit, he became a Josephite father, and began his ministry among southern blacks.  The Cuban Missile Crisis inspired him to enfold anti-militarism work into his consciousness.  From there the injustice of Vietnam—sending poor Americans to kill poor Vietnamese—made more connections, and drew his activity.  Later his focus shifted to nuclear weapons, which not only threaten us all if they would be used again, but siphon money needed for the poor and destroy the earth.

But Phil didn’t live in chronological time, he lived in poetic time, wherein we transcend time and place, and cultivate a heightened reality and consciousness.  The poetic vision is created by intention, imagination, dreaming, reverie.  It is touched by grace and beauty and tinged by rebirth, and is necessary to move forward.  He knew the road to disarmament would be long and lonely, but chose it as a disciple of Christ, fighting what he called “the Lamb’s War,” a nonviolent struggle.  He saw his only choice as to live as a servant, no matter the odds or the setbacks, traumas, tragedies, and triumphs.

According to Brad, “Phil saw God each day not out the window, or up in heaven, but in each person … touched by grace and beauty, tinged by rebirth.”  He often spoke of the need to “go into the breach, the ditch, with the victims,” otherwise injustice will persist.

Lessons and challenges

Each of us creates our own story, woven from the threads of our individual lives.  We must be sure we create the right story.  Anything that exiles us from community, uses violence as a tool, is not the right story.  Authoritarianism seeks that we surrender our personal story to the collective.  Hold on to your own story.  We must liberate ourselves from and story that removes us from humanity.  If we see ourselves in poetic time, the peaceful future is possible.

Affluence can desensitize us by drawing our focus to our own financial affairs, so we don’t look at the suffering of others, we become indifference, not fully human.

We need to create a symbol of resistance for our time.  Gandhi’s was the handful of salt, Martin Luther King, Jr’s the bus boycotts, the icon of Vietnam blood and napalm on draft cards.  What is ours today?

Nonviolent resistance is not only our best choice, but our only hope.  Jesus never taught anything he didn’t do.

“Hit and stay,” is part of the witness.  The consequences are an integral part of the action.

The American church’s focus on worship rather than mercy, personal piety rather than social justice does us a disservice.  To be fully human we have to take in all the suffering, pain, death, fear, while also seeing the Reign that is/is not yet.

“See the truth.  Speak the truth.  Act the truth.”  

“Confronting evil is the ultimate task of the Christian,” according to Phil.  We cannot be silent if we want peace.  We must go forward and undertake our own ministry of risk.  It’s a call-and-response between God and us.  We may not be called to repeated arrests, but whatever our career or life circumstance, we are called.  Can we be “faithful enough to suffer; daring enough to serve”?

As Phil pondered for himself, we must ask the central question of life: “What does Christ want from me?”

After such rich input we greatly needed a break and time in small groups to process and break it down.  Some thoughts were: 

• “Winter ends and spring comes”