A Lenten reflection
The following article originally appeared in the March-April 2007 issue of NewsNotes, published by the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns (MOGC). It is written by Marie Dennis, director of the MOGC.

This spring, the war in Iraq will rage past a four-year marker; the war in Afghanistan is well into its fifth year; the violence against the people of Darfur seems without end; violent conflict continues in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, the Middle East and in dozens of other places; and local or “street” violence abounds in many corners of the world. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year on military readiness. Small arms and light weapons are a worldwide plague. Eighteen years after the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons are proliferating and being readied, at least by the United States, for battlefield use. Huge profits flow from the relentless pursuit of personal, public and national security. What would it mean this Lent to fast from violence? What can we do to build respectful, nonviolent relationships in this Sabbath year?

Jonah, with God’s urging, suggested to Nineveh a place to begin. Perhaps we can translate his story (Jonah 3:1-10) into our own context.

Jonah began his journey across the United States, and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing, “Forty days more and the United States shall be destroyed, ”when the people of the United States believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the president of the United States, he walked out among the people whose lives were shattered by violence, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes.

Then he had this proclaimed throughout the U.S.: “Neither human nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water.

“All the people and beasts shall be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; every person shall turn from his or her evil way and from the violence … in hand.

“Who knows, God may relent and forgive, and withhold the blazing wrath, so that we shall not perish.”

When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, God repented of the evil that God had threatened to do to them; and did not carry it out.

How many pictures have we seen of Iraqi women and men wailing over the bodies of loved ones? How many times have we seen brokenhearted Afghans carrying the bleeding bodies of their children? How many stories have we heard about children in Lebanon or Israel or Palestine blown apart by unexploded munitions?

We are a country at war. Ask soldiers and former soldiers; the children and parents, husbands and wives of soldiers; the loved ones of men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ask those who have come home forever wounded – in body and spirit. Ask the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is so far away for many of us that press reports and political debate almost always fail to make it real.

Like too much of life on the “other side of reality” – the other side of the world, the other side of the border, the other side of town, the other side of the tracks, it is two dimensional to us, apersonal, ahistorical. We don’t really pay attention because we don’t understand the details of what’s going on, who is involved or why.

Yet, we are literally surrounded by situations that violate the values we claim to hold dear. We are surrounded by a global reality that insults our most deeply held convictions. Violence and wars are a big part of that reality - with all their causes and consequences.

We are not responsible for every violence, every war, every injustice, but we – by policy or lifestyle – are responsible for far too many of them. How many times has the United States started a war or supported an oppressive government or signed a trade agreement that maintained our privileged way of life at the expense of other people? To keep the supply of oil or coltan flowing into our cars and cell phones? To keep abundant water available to satisfy our bottled water fetish? To open markets to the products our companies wanted to export at the expense of local businesses employing local people?

What is the fast to which we are called in this seventh year after the turn of the millennium? “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:6) To build right relationships, to nurture global solidarity, to become global good neighbors – that is the fast to which we are called.