Monday of the Eighth
Week in Ordinary Time
(Sirach 17:20-24; Mark 10:17-27)
In The Red Wheel
novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn pictures a young army officer seeking advice
from a priest about the morality of war.
The officer wonders what Jesus meant when he told his disciples not to
resist evil. He asks whether the Russian
writer Leo Tolstoy was not correct to interpret the passage as a condemnation
of war. The priest responds that there
are worse evils than war and that war is the necessary price for living together
in a state. On this Memorial Day we might
understand the gospel in this light.
When Jesus tells the young man that he must give up
everything and follow him to have eternal life, he means of course that the man
becomes one of his disciples. But cannot
a disciple fight in the army to protect the common good? The army is a great equalizer. Soldiers give up individual privileges to
become an effective fighting unit. Often
enough they are also called to give up their lives. When they do these things out of love for
country, they should indeed be considered as Jesus’ followers.
Today we honor especially those who have died in
war. Perhaps some did so reluctantly and
maybe some fought for reasons other than love of country. We also pray for them
that they may be judged for the good that they did. After all, we hope to be judged ourselves according
to the same measure.
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