By Mary Kay Craig
Holy Spirit Catholic Community, Butte

Jesuit Father John Dear says he was “ordained to make peace.” Since then he has been arrested over 75 times in relentless, nonviolent actions in pursuit of peace.

Father John (“Please don’t call me “father dear’) spoke in October at Christ the King Parish in Missoula, telling the packed house-of-the-Lord about his conversion to peace activism.

He’d hung out with “frat boys” and partyers in college, and looked for easy coursework when he signed up for an abnormal psychology class. It brought the life-changing experience of listening to “forsaken people.”

“My complacency was shattered.” He was struck with the difference between his privileged lifestyle at Duke University and that of the least among us at the North Carolina State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

As a young seminarian, contemplating his vocation to the priesthood in a solitary camping trip along the Sea of Galilee in1982, John Dear soaked in the calm beauty of the surroundings. A last stop was the Chapel of the Beatitudes at the far end of the sea. Reading each “Blessed are they...” he marveled at how specific Jesus’ words were. Alone in the chapel on the Mount, he suddenly heard them as if addressed to him personally:

“I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of God for God makes the sun rise on the bad and on the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” And he pondered on “Be compassionate as your God is compassionate.”

He felt he’d found “the pearl of great price” for the words were the answer to every worldly ill.

That’s when his legs went rubbery with the shocking realization that Jesus was serious about what he wanted from John Dear. He looked out over the sea from the balcony of the church and prayed, considering all the implications – being meek, emptying himself to be poor in spirit, hungering for justice, being reviled.

He surely did not want to be persecuted. Then, aha! ... a loophole presented itself. Alone on the balcony, he shouted into the skies, “OK, God, I promise to live out your Beatitudes if you give me a sign!”

Suddenly, a thunderous roar. Repeated booms assaulted the silence. He ducked.

At the far end of the Sea of Galilee, two Israeli fighter jets swooped low across the water, breaking the sound barrier, aiming right at him. Crouched low, he watched them rise over the chapel at the last minute.

Moments later new “booms” arose as bombs were dropped in nearby Lebanon.

Father John Dear said he would never ask God for a sign again. He does live out the Beatitudes, though especially reviled for Jesus’ sake.

As punishment for protesting weapons of mass destruction, he spent more than a year of his life in jail, 10 months of that without being allowed to leave the small cell even once. On another occasion, a U.S. National Guard battalion stood outside his New Mexico parish chanting, “one bullet, one kill.” He’s traveled the world in pursuit of peace that comes, not just from justice, but from love.

John Dear has written over 20 books on peace and nonviolence. He points out that all the world’s religions have a common ground in advocating for peace with greetings such as “salaam” and “shalom.” Inspired by Catholic peace leaders Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day and Daniel and Philip Berrigan, he also quotes the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi on the nonviolence of Jesus.

Gandhi believed Jesus to be the most perfectly nonviolent person to have ever lived. Dear believes that Gandhi, who studied Jesus every day of his life, came to embody the Beatitudes more so than anyone else. The value of Dear’s own peace seeking is apparent in that Nobel Peace Prize winner, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, nominated John Dear for the 2008 Nobel.

The Missoula audience heard a recitation of Jesus’ nonviolent peace actions, such as stopping the stoning of a woman, tipping the money-changers’ tables to bring right relationship back to the temple, and telling his “rock on which [he] built his church” to put down his sword while he was then led off to his death.

Dear’s autobiography, “A Persistent Peace: one man’s struggle for a nonviolent world,” was published by the Jesuit Loyola Press in August. About the book he says, “The times are terrible, but there are signs of hope everywhere, and I hope more and more people will take up the nonviolent struggle for justice and disarmament, and spend their lives working to abolish war, poverty, nuclear weapons and global warming, in order to welcome God’s reign of peace in our midst.”

In “A Persistent Peace” one finds the many ideas Dear puts forth for ordinary people to walk along the narrow path of Jesus. A key is that he himself came to embody peace by studying holy men and women of peace. He asks that we all make that effort to become “Beatitude People.”

For more information, visit www.persistentpeace.com or www.loyolapress.com.

Justice Voices articles are coordinated by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development committee of the Diocese of Helena.


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 24, No. 11, November 21, 2008.