For the Feast of Mary Magdalene

The warrior archetype is not going away. Our job is to educate and redefine the warrior in the way that Moses, David, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Dorothy Day lived out their passion. Warrior energy is not in its essence wrong. It takes warrior energy to see through and stand against mass illusions of our time, and be willing to pay the price of disobedience. It takes warrior energy to see through the soft rhetoric of “support our troops” which cleverly diverts us from the objective evil of war. It takes warrior energy to march to a different drum, disbelieve the patriotic trivia, and re-believe in the tradition of non-violence, civil resistance, and martyrdom.

Young men and women who take oaths of secular governments are not martyrs in any classic sense; rather they are soldiers offering to kill for Caesar. We Christians are taught a very different way: the way of the cross.

Richard Rohr, ‘For the Victory of Love’, Praying, No. 43, July-August 1991, pp. 11-12, with thanks to John Mark Ministries