Throughout the Lenten season, we will post reflections for holy days and Sundays from this year’s Lenten reflection booklet, A Fast That Matters, written by Frida Berrigan, and excerpts from past booklets, like the one posted below, written by Suzanne Belote Shanley and Brayton Shanley in “Go forth and live in peace: Reflections for Lent 2018.” Click here to see all reflections as they are posted as well as links to other Lenten resources on our Lent 2024 webpage.
reflection for THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT, MARch 10, 2024
by Suzanne Belote Shanley and Brayton Shanley
2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23 | Ephesians 2:4-10 | John 3:14-21
For everyone who does wicked things hates the good and does not come toward the good, so that their works might not be exposed.
John 3:20-21
In a letter to the Agape Community from jail, Philip Berrigan wrote, “Expose nonviolently the respectable murderers.” Then he acknowledged the need for “someone, whether God or God’s prophet,” to tear the veil from what he called “a thunderous national silence” around “the BOMB and war-making.”
Phil saw the bomb as “the taproot of violence, which kills us in every conceivable way,” and he offered his “remedy” to “this curse of killing.” Phil’s solution: “An unequivocal stand against killing in war, killing on death row, killing in the womb, killing the elderly, killing in the home or on the street, killing by economics or dictatorship.”
In his cherished, distinctive handwriting in letters written to us at Agape over two decades, Phil succinctly and bluntly calls the community to nonviolent faith and action. “I’m writing to Christians — say your prayers, do your homework and take every opportunity to expose nonviolently the respectable murderers. John says it all — lying always accompanies murder. And both are Satanism.”
What actions do we need to take in order to “expose nonviolently the respectable murderers”? Who are the leaders among us that wield violence through action and word?
Click here to see more resources for prayer, study and action this Lenten season.
This reflection was originally published in Go forth and live in peace: Reflections for Lent 2018, by Suzanne Belote Shanley and Brayton Shanley, co-founders of the Agape Community in Hardwick, Massachusetts.