Enough wars, brothers, let's stop

In the space of a few weeks the world fell back into the nightmare of war and every word previously written seemed useless to me. The war in Israel and Palestine threatens to become increasingly global and already is through the images and voices that arrive every day in our lives and in our apparent tranquility. There is no corner of the world where there is not an ongoing conflict or war. Everywhere there is hatred and division, violence and revenge seem to be the only words capable of making their way.

Everyone praises the extermination of the enemy, each for his own "excellent reasons".
The sense of helplessness that grips us extinguishes the hope that something can be done.
Yet we believe in peace and we believe in it even when it isn't there, when it seems like an illusion. We believe in peace because it is possible, it is within man's reach, if man returns to God with all his heart.
We believe in peace, always, because it is a promise from God and a gift from him.

We believe in man, in the value of everyone's life and we repeat with conviction that there is no right reason to kill. I often repeat that for good purposes only good exists and that the real enemy is hate, it is never the other.
If we do not understand that every life is sacred we will remain stuck in our instinct which risks leading us into the logic of an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Evil wants to convince us that we can't do anything about war. It seeks allies and finds them to suggest to us that we cannot stop it, that peace is unrealistic, too simple in the face of the complexity of political history.

We are not naive, we know that today's world is complicated, but we don't want to stop there. The Word of God teaches us to look beyond, to look at the Kingdom that inhabits our land, to remind us that peacemakers will be called children of God. Peace is going beyond what we see.
Believing in peace is within our reach.

Ernesto Olivero
Editorial
NP November 2023