Liturgical Reflection
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‘Never again will they suffer hunger or thirst The ideal is that soldiers give their lives for others. That is what the Anzac tradition enshrines. In that sense, you can see the relation between Jesus dying and rising and the death of people in battle. A soldier serving in Afghanistan said he saw his unit making a difference to the lives of ordinary people. He believed that the deaths of his comrades were not in vain. However, there are other messy, less noble sides to war. Not all armies or countries keep the Geneva Convention. Great suffering, grief and loss come to the combatants and their families and the non-combatant families , so-called ‘collateral damage’. Wars are terrible. What drives nations to spend huge amounts of money on weapons to kill and maim other people? Every person who dies is someone’s brother, sister, husband, wife, child . We would have hoped that the suffering of World Wars I and II would have been enough to prevent war, but still arms are traded, even children are recruited as soldiers and terrorists. Conscientious objectors to war like Franz Jaggerstatter were executed because they would not agree to be conscripted as soldiers. Jesus was a man of peace. No one should have ever used his name to conquer in battle. He is not ‘on our side’; he is on all sides – Shepherd of all. Shepherds in Palestine-Israel still call their sheep and they follow behind them. Maybe some of you have had a pet lamb and had a similar experience of the lamb running to you when you called, rather than the helter skelter of a big flock of sheep with circling sheep dogs. Jesus is calling us each by name – out of the encircling ruins of culture wars, climate wars, and modern messy wars into a peace and harmony Rose Mary Kinne op
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