Caracas (Venezuela), Sr. Nícida Díaz Leal, 11/11/2024.- I would like to begin this reflection with an anecdote from Anthony de Mello: ‘It was bitterly cold, and the rabbi and his disciples were huddled by the fire. One of the disciples, echoing the teachings of his Master, said: ‘On a day as cold as this, I know exactly what to do. What is to be done, the others asked. Keep warm. And if that is not possible, I also know what to do. What is to be done? Freeze. The existing reality cannot really be rejected or accepted. Running away from it is like trying to run away from your own feet. Accepting it is like trying to kiss your own lips. All you have to do is to look, understand and be at peace’. (La oración de la rana [The Frog's Prayer], p. 28).

This is what we are looking for in the face of the convulsive reality we are living in these years where war (Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Myanmar, Sudan, Haiti..., and so many countries that live in an atmosphere of war), where lies and fraud are imposed (Venezuela, Nicaragua...); hatred and revenge (Venezuela, Nicaragua...); hatred and revenge take the lead and it seems that nobody can do anything to stop so much evil and, everything is becoming normalised, insinuating that there is no other way but to get used to the fact that ‘this is how life is and what can we do about it’... Well, no! Sisters and brothers, life is not like that. Therefore, it is urgent for us to do justice to reality, we must unlearn our conformism and learn to be evangelical resistors, to live against the current of a system that only looks at power and having at the cost of innocent lives. A system created “by men who want wars, unleash them, feed them, prolong them uselessly or cynically profit from them” (Pope Francis in Pontiffex_en. 12 October 2024).

A system that clings to power with fraud as we are experiencing in Venezuela; it blatantly denies the truth of a people who risked voting for democracy and freedom to live with dignity. The payoff is the imprisonment of adolescents, young people, women and men to guarantee corrupt and oppressive power.

A system that causes migration, displaced people and refugees, victims of trafficking and exploitation of so many men and women, mostly young people who have no choice but to sell their bodies ‘on the sly’ in order to eat and support their families, sacrificing their dignity so that their families can live....

We are urged to have that contemplative wisdom to look, to understand and to be at peace, but a restless peace, always on the move, seeking the Truth as we contemplate this world that is yours and mine, everyone's, and like the psalmist let our hearts and eyes be moved, joining our voice to those whom war silences, and exclaiming with them: “Let my eyes overflow with tears, night and day without ceasing ... If I go into the country, I see those slain by the sword; if I go into the city, I see the ravages of famine. Both prophet and priest have gone to a land they know not... We hoped for peace     but no good has come, for a time of healing but there is only terror.” (Jer 14:17-21). We are urged by this wisdom to be with those who experience first-hand the fraud of stolen elections and find their hands tied for fear of repression, torture, death... To be with the many people who flee their country in search of a better quality of life, work, education, a home where they can lay their heads and rest.

There are so many realities that disturb us and move us because they become concrete faces that are engraved in our souls: migrants, refugees and displaced persons, victims of trafficking, the cries of mothers when they see their children imprisoned, killed in the war, orphaned children and survivors traumatised by the bombing, forgetting how to play and run without fear and without bombs; parents with their dead children in their arms in the middle of the ruins and the bombing....

In such a harsh reality we cannot be lukewarm; either we are cold and let everything pass without affecting us, inventing other things to avoid seeing the reality, or we are hot because the fire of the Spirit burns us in the depths of our soul until we exclaim with the cry of our brothers and sisters:  We praise you, God,
 we praise you, for your Name is near; (Ps 76). This is the mysticism and prophecy of consecrated life, which sets us as sentinels and makes us follow the paths of the women and men of the Dawn who are not content with death, but who decide to set out on a journey in search of the One who gives us Life and sustains our life in order to give life in abundance (Jn 10,10).

“Look, understand and be at peace”.... Perhaps our best contribution is not to curse this reality and those who cause it, but to pray, pray, and never tire of praying, that our prayer may be the consolation for a mother, for the thousands of families who hope to see their loved ones return; that our prayer may be forgiveness for those who do not care about life and continue to provoke war, hate, division and death, for those who rob us of truth and freedom, the right to live with dignity, for those who rob children of the joy of living and dreaming.... Our prayer must be the strength for the migrants, the hope for the victims, the love that unites us... our prayer must interpret our hope, that prophetic hope that speaks to us of a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21, 1-4)

Our prayer must also be that silent cry that reaches the heart of God and invites us to be neighbours along the way, that moves us to seek the thousand and one ways to do justice to reality and to say that this suffering reality is not God's will for his sons and daughters, and to begin in the small, where we live, where we move and where we exist; to begin to build spaces where dignified life is guaranteed, to reinvent, to welcome, to help our brothers and sisters to give meaning to their hope, to discover that they are not alone, that God walks with his people and sustains us on the paths of Peace, that Peace that we all dream of and that no one can take away from us because it is God's gift for his sons and daughters.... May our prayer be the definitive seal of Peace!