The invasion of Ukraine by Russia reminds us once again that we live in a world that is held together by a fragile peace.  Our hearts cry out when we see the violence of war arrive in any human community.  The spotlight is on the Ukraine at the moment, and rightly so.  But there are also violent clashes and simmering conflicts continuing around the globe, often without media attention, in Armenia, Libya, South Sudan, and Mexico – just to name a few.

We can often feel helpless in the face of these global conflicts.  Our hearts are heavy but we don’t know what to do.

Pope Francis has called for a Day of Fasting for Peace on Ash Wednesday for the situation in Ukraine.  At his general audience on Wednesday, 23 February, he said that despite the efforts of world leaders, ‘increasingly alarming scenarios are opening up.’

Pope Francis has pleaded with those in authority to ‘examine their consciences seriously before God, who is the God of peace and not of war, who is the Father of all, not just of some, who wants us to be brothers and not enemies.’

So we should join Francis in a day of prayer and fasting.  Will that make a difference?  Can our prayer really be useful?  I came across a reflection on this very question in the last two days.  It is written by Dominique Greiner, a moral theologian and Assumptionist priest and it appeared in La Croix International.

“Can prayer really change the hearts of leaders and stop the sound of guns?  Christians pray for peace to proclaim loud and clear that they abhor war.  In the Christian view, nothing can justify such a sacrificial practice, which demands its share of victims and causes so much suffering and tears.  War is always an evil for Christians.  They pray for peace because they believe that building peace is not just a matter of foreign policy.  It is also a spiritual matter, a matter of “interior politics”: peace requires men and women who are at peace internally and who can be its ambassadors.  The human heart is the first battlefield on which violence and peace clash.  Christians pray for peace because, as disciples of Jesus Christ, they cannot imagine living in any other way than non-violently, according to the style of the gospel.  They assume that fasting and prayer is all they have to oppose the deadly rituals of war.  They have no other weapons than this unshielded ritual of prayer.  Given the scale of the military resources deployed, this may seem quite paltry.  But people of prayer put their trust in God and believe in God’s disarming power.”

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent and it is the day that we are called to the annual season of repentance.  Too often Christians undertake the Lenten journey as an individual spiritual renewal.  In fact, Lent is a very communal season.  As Christians, we actually undertake the Lenten period on behalf of the whole world.  We are called to prayer and action that points to the vision of the world that is God’s.

So, let us hope and pray that this coming season of Lent may actually contribute to the building of peace and the elimination of violence from all human hearts.

By Fr Brendan Reed

Read Dominique Grier’s article Disarming Prayer.

Read Pope announces 2 March as day of prayer and fasting for Ukraine.