The following is a partial list of countries or regions suffering from serious armed conflict at this time: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ukraine, South Sudan, Israel/Gaza, Somalia, and Yemen. You can add India, Uganda, Libya, Sudan, and Egypt as countries also experiencing serious conflicts, and the list goes on from there. By one estimate the world is spending more than $1.6 trillion a year on its armed forces. That’s $1,600,000,000,000 dollars. That’s more than 4 billion dollars a day. Think of what that money could do if channeled into humanitarian, educational, and social needs.

There is a dramatic moment in the Palm Sunday narrative of the Lord’s Passion that speaks volumes to our endless addiction to armed conflict. As Jesus is being arrested under cloak of darkness, one of his followers lashes out at the high priest’s servant and cuts off his ear. Jesus is having none of it. “‘Stop, no more of this!’ Then he touched the servant’s ear and healed him.”

With this one sentence and gesture, Jesus sums up the whole of his gospel message. “Stop hurting one another! Start healing one another!” Our extravagant investment in armaments has not given us a better answer, nor will it ever. Yet we continue on, too stubborn, proud, and distrustful to be the first to lay down our weapons.

There are glimmers of hope on the horizon, though you have to look hard to see them. The United Nations International Day of Peace each year on September 21 is certainly a day to celebrate. This past year Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to all warning parties to observe a global cease-fire, to “stop the killings and the destruction, and create space for lasting peace.”

The United States Institute of Peace recently published a book, Personal Stories from the Frontlines of War and Peace. With a foreword by the Dalai Lama, the book contains interviews with 80 ordinary citizens—a taxi driver, a nun, a machinery worker, a mother—from conflict zones all over the world. “Their accounts illuminate the intensely personal experience of war, the uncertain transition to peace, and the aspirations that survive despite it all,” say the publishers.

Lessons drawn from the gospel

Imagine having the courage and presence of mind to stop to heal your enemy as he is about to lead you to certain death. Yet Jesus cared so much for us and believed so deeply in the Good News that he was willing to go to the mat, literally—to the cross and the tomb—to shake us from our collective complacency so we would pay attention to what he was teaching and showing us through his words and actions. Jesus paid the ultimate price—willingly—so that his remarkable witness would be preserved. Two thousand years later the story endures so we might hear it anew and this time, at last, take it to heart as a people.

Final thought in light of the news

In their book The Lessons of History, historians Willa and Ariel Durant reviewed humanity’s historical record on war and peace. They concluded, “In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.” In other words, well under 10 percent of the time have we managed to make the peace. It’s too late for the year 2016 to be completely war free, but there is still time to silence the guns in the days ahead. Closer to home, family life, neighborhoods, and cities also suffer the scourge of violence. Let’s renew our efforts to be peacemakers, let’s knock war off the front pages and eventually consign it to the dustbin of failed strategies. What better week to begin than Holy Week?