Homily of Archbishop John Wester on the Occasion of the Third Meeting of the Parties to the TPNW

The following transcript was automatically generated, then reviewed and edited to ensure accuracy. Wester’s quote from Dorothy Day elides several phrases and sentences; see the link for her full text.

As so many of you fully realize, just days after American pilots dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day penned a searing editorial denouncing the country’s nuclear achievement. Quote:

Mr. Truman was jubilant; “jubilant” the newspapers said…. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese.

That is, we hope we have killed them…. The effect is hoped for, not known. It is to be hoped they are vaporized, our Japanese brothers – scattered, men, women and babies…over the seven seas. Perhaps we will breathe their dust into our nostrils, feel them in the fog of New York on our faces, feel them in the rain on the hills of Easton.

Jubilate Deo…. We have created destruction.

 End quote.

Imagine, for a moment, what it took for Dorothy Day to pen that article from which I just quoted. We were at the end of World War II. The nation was ecstatic. The president was jubilant.

For her to write that brutally honest and countercultural article that cut to the heart of the matter took great courage. It also meant that she possessed the truth.

I believe we see the same reality in the Beatitudes that Matthew’s Gospel just proclaimed. Poverty, meekness, mourning, mercy, purity of heart, persecution were not seen really as desirable in the days of Jesus, and certainly not peacekeeping. No: power, vanquishing the enemy, military might, political influence, riches, superiority over others — these were the goals of a happy life, of a blessed life.

And yet Jesus was speaking of a higher truth. He had the courage to speak the truth.

What was it that Jesus saw?  Was he proclaiming that mourning and poverty and meekness, et cetera, are being blessed? I don’t think so. And yet that’s the word he uses. I think maybe a better translation would be fortunate: “Blessed are those who mourn for they are fortunate. Blessed are the peacemakers, they are fortunate, et cetera.”

Why would they be fortunate?

Jesus knew that those who receive these blessings, these fortunate circumstances, are placed in a position before God of emptiness, of pain, of need — a realization that God is their only true happiness, that only in God will our hearts cease to be restless.

Leonard Cohen, in his famous song “Anthem,” speaks about there being a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in. So what Jesus is really saying is, “You’re cracked. And that’s how the light will get in, so be at peace.”

I remember the anecdote, you probably heard of it, when Mark Twain was giving counseling to this gentleman who needed help. And Mark Twain said, “Well, just give up smoking.” And the man said, “I don’t smoke.”

And he said, “Well, give up drinking.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Give up gossiping.”

“I don’t gossip.”

Mark Twain said, “There he was, a sinking ship and no luggage to throw overboard.”

And so what Jesus is saying, and what Dorothy Day understood, is that the truth is that all of us need God. And when these circumstances befall us that remind us of that, instead of dwelling on that pain, recognize that you’re being given an opportunity, that you’re fortunate, that you’re blessed. Jesus lives in the heart of his father, Abba. Jesus knew that we need to surrender our worship of power, of prestige, of influence, of money, in order that we create a space for God to work in us and to give us the real power of love.

For God is love, St. John says quite clearly, quite simply. God is love. Love disarms us. It calls us to surrender our egos, to lay aside our need to control and to be powerful and to be a military might.

That was the vision of Dorothy Day, that love is the only solution to our problems today. The love of God, the love of neighbor, and the love of creation. Those who know this are fortunate. And those whose mourning reminds them of it are blessed.

Love is the fundamental, absolute, solitary motivation that animates our vision of a world without nuclear weapons. The trouble is, how do we convince people that love is the answer? Or as the Beatles sang, “All you need is love, love is all you need.”

To be honest, I think it sounds a bit naive. We hear that a lot from those who have proposed that deterrence is the answer. 

How do we convince people that deterrence is not really deterrence, but only delay? Delay of the inevitable? That deterrence is living by luck that is sure to run out one of these days, and the way things are going, probably sooner than later? How do we convince people that deterrence is the threat?

I believe that we do so by living in the light of Christ, by following his example, an example of the Beatitudes. Scripture scholars tell us that Jesus is the Beatitudes, that they’re a blueprint for who Jesus is. And so by living the Beatitudes, we’re living Christ, and we’re living in his light, and we show the world a path that diverges from nuclear might to covenant relationships between nations, from military power to compassion for all of God’s children, from hoarding the Earth’s treasures to sharing them with everybody. Not buying a country’s resources, but sharing a country’s resources.

By living the Beatitudes, we can light a spark in the same way that John Fitzgerald Kennedy did in his peace speech delivered at American University in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 1963.

It’s motivated by love and by living the Beatitudes that we can enter into conversations with our elected leaders, our neighbors, and our fellow parishioners, and lay out the dynamics of nuclear disarmament and share with them why this second nuclear arms race is a race to disaster, especially with artificial intelligence and hypersonic delivery systems and ever more advanced technology.

It is motivated by love that we can demonstrate how nuclear weapons do not need new pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratories, which is, in fact, a whole new modernization program costing billions and billions of dollars.

It is motivated by love that we can listen attentively to those who would propose spending trillions of dollars over time on weapons of mass destruction when that money could be spent on educating children, finding cures to cancer, feeding the hungry, and bringing people out of degrading poverty.

It is motivated by love that we can share with people the many times we narrowly escape nuclear disaster, whether by accident, a miraculous decision by one or two military officers, or just sheer luck.

We can seek, motivated by love, to convince others that the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a reasonable, prudent, and fortuitous treaty that can and should be signed by all nations, particularly nuclear states, and particularly this year, the 80^th anniversary of the horrific bombings of which Dorothy Day wrote so powerfully.

We can show folks that our laboratories are able to verify nuclear disarmament, and that nuclear disarmament is indeed possible, and at the very least, far saner than what we have now. It is through love that we can point out the thousands of people who have either died or been sickened by the side effects of nuclear weapons development, especially at the Tularosa Basin in my own archdiocese, a bit south of it.

All of this, all that we do, is motivated by love. Love of God, love of neighbor, and love of our common home, Mother Earth. 

If this is being naive, then count me in as one less wise. After all, the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. It takes courage for us to stay committed to the goal of nuclear disarmament, courage to act in the face of being laughed at, scorned, and dismissed as being naive and Pollyannish.

It takes courage to commit ourselves to a goal that seems so very far away, and today, given the geopolitical environment, so seemingly improbable. It takes courage to spend time and money and energy in a cause that so few seem to care about anymore, even after the invasion of Ukraine.

It took courage for Dorothy Day to pen that article in 1945, and it took courage for Jesus to preach a gospel of peace to a people living under Roman occupation.

We live in a world occupied by thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons, and it takes courage, it takes love to plead for their demise.

But we take heart that we are united in love, Christ’s love, and our love for each other, that together we can do more than alone. With each other, we find renewed strength and unflagging courage to forge ahead in the cause of nuclear disarmament.

And that is why Archbishop Etienne of Seattle and I have joined with Bishop Shirahama of Hiroshima and Archbishop Nakamura and Archbishop Emeritus Takami of Nagasaki, with the dear help of (Dr.) Hiro Miyazaki, to form a partnership for a world without nuclear weapons. As dioceses that continue to develop nuclear weapons and dioceses that continue to feel the effect of their deployments, we’re working hard to bring home Pope Francis’s clarion imperative that even possessing nuclear weapons is immoral. 

Pope Francis has sparked a new chapter in the community of the Catholic Church and beyond that no longer allows for deterrence, but insists that all nuclear weapons must be banished from the face of the earth. It is in community that we find renewed strength and courage to proclaim a gospel of love and peace, a peace that only Christ can give.

Speaking of Pope Francis, for whom we pray at this mass so ardently, I like very much what I saw on Rosemary Pace’s email a few days ago when she quoted the Holy Father. The Pope said, and I quote:

Peace is not made only by written agreements or by human and political compromises. It is born from transformed hearts and arises when each of us has encountered and been touched by God’s love, which dissolves our selfishness, shatters our prejudices, and grants us the taste and joy of friendship, fraternity, and mutual solidarity.

I pray with you tonight that this Eucharist pours out many graces on all of us so that you and I might live the Sermon on the Mount when Christ gave us the Beatitudes, that we might have the insight and courage of Dorothy Day, that we might hold high the banner of love, naive as it may seem, confident that they who abide in love abide in God and God in them.

Interestingly enough, General Omar Bradley seems to grasp the message of the Beatitudes quite well. He said that ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. “We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.”

Words of Archbishop Wester Prior to Ash Wednesday Witness at the U.N.

Thank you. Well, I just wanted to say that all of you, first of all, your witness is very important. Jesus sent the disciples forth to give witness, and so it’s very important that we speak, especially for those who can’t speak for themselves, and especially for those who may not be aware of the terrible situation we have in our world today with nuclear weapons. So many people, and especially our young people, we have to really pray for them that they’ll become more aware of the situation, as you are. You’re aware of the situation, and you’re doing something about it by lending your voices, your bodies, your presence to this very important cause of peace. So I just want you to know that we’ve been praying for all of us that are involved, whatever your organization is, and we thank you.Thank you for your witness. So, let’s just have a quick prayer. 

Loving God, I ask your blessing today upon all of us as we give witness to the gospel of peace, as we give witness to your presence in our midst, and that you call us to live in peace and harmony with one another.In particular, Lord, we are deeply aware of the danger of nuclear weapons, how they are a threat to our very existence, to the very lives that you cherish so much, to the creation that you cherish so much, to our Mother Earth that you cherish so much. And so, loving God, we ask you, therefore, please help us to be strong, to be courageous, to trust in your presence in our midst, and to engage people in this important conversation that will lead toward nuclear disarmament. May Almighty God bless all of you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

The ashes are a sign, of course, of our humility, of the fact that we come before the Lord seeking his love and forgiveness, that we want to give witness to his presence. And so, kind of a, I say, repent and believe in the gospel.You could also say, remember that you were dust, and that to dust you shall return. That’s kind of a gloomy proposition, so I like the gospel part better, so I’ll use that one. They’re both valid, so to say. So, we can line up, and we’ll do that.