Our Peace Candle has started its now annual way around our 3 Churches homes. Please sign the list in your church if you wish to be part of its journey. Here is a message from Fr Rob Esdaile to help our thoughts…

God is love – the fundamental Gospel message. Jesus refused to hate his enemies, to retaliate or to seek their destruction. For 300 years nearly all Christians took these two truths for granted, until Constantine lifted the Church out of persecution and set it on the road to power. And then the cross gradually took on the shape of a weapon in many people’s eyes.

Today the Church is no longer needed by secular power as a prop. That frees us to articulate a different vision; no longer as guardians of a ‘Just War’ but as prophets of a ‘Just Peace’. That requires, firstly, our own conversion of heart. Next it means reaching beyond the rhetoric of conflict to try to hear the real hopes and fears of our opponents and to identify what we have in common. Then initiatives to promote dialogue must follow, with measures which can ‘de-escalate’ tensions and resolve disputes, learning both from recent conflict resolution processes and from our own Christian tradition of peacemaking. And through all of this must run an effort to articulate a vision of the sort of people we want to be and the sort of world we wish to create: how can we make it easier to live together in harmony?

The vision is a radical one, a new style of politics, as Pope Francis has said. The transformation won’t be easy, but it’s the only path which offers hope to our divided world. There are many others who are already committed to this new way, in organisations such as the international Catholic Peace Movement, Pax Christi, groups which have already developed training and techniques for those who dare to believe that another way is possible. But our greatest resource is the message and example of Jesus, calling us to love our enemies and to walk the way of peace together. In that sign we have our victory.

Fr Matthew