Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 26:7–9, 12, 16–19
On September 26, 1983, the Soviet nuclear warning system announced that missiles had been launched from the United States.
Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the officer on duty.
He had only minutes to decide.
Was it a real attack? Was it a computer error? Was the world about to burn?
He judged it to be a false alarm.
Then he waited.
His decision helped prevent a nuclear war.
Today Isaiah prays:
“Lord, you establish peace for us.”
In Hebrew, peace is shalom.
It is more than silence after battle.
It is wholeness. Right relationship. A healed world. Life in its proper order.
Isaiah knows that such peace cannot be produced by fear, weapons, treaties, slogans, or human good will alone.
Human history proves this.
We long for peace, yet prepare for war.
We speak of security, yet build weapons that can destroy the earth.
We say we want life, yet keep choosing death.
That is why Isaiah does not say:
Lord, we have made peace.
He says:
“Lord, you establish peace for us.”
Peace is God’s work.
God begins it. God sustains it. God brings it to completion.
Isaiah also sees a future still beyond our reach:
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
nor shall they train for war anymore.
That future has not yet arrived.
The swords are still being sharpened. The nations are still training. The earth is still trembling.
But the promise remains.
Pope John XXIII understood this when he wrote Peace on Earth.
Peace cannot stand unless the order placed by God in human life is respected.
That order is written in the human heart.
Truth. Justice. Charity. Freedom.
And all of them must aim at the common good of every person:
those living now, and those yet to come.
No nation can say:
my life matters more.
No race can say:
my suffering matters more.
No generation can say:
the earth belongs only to us.
We are bound together.
People and peoples. Sea and forest. Bird and fish. Soil and sky.
The common good embraces other living things and all of creation as well.
“Lord, you establish peace for us.”
This is our hope:
that God is still making peace.
Quietly. Patiently. Against our madness. Against our violence. Against our love of war.
And one day, what Isaiah saw from afar will become the song of the earth:
no sword against another nation,
no training for war,
no fear of destruction,
only the shalom that God alone can give.
Biblical Reflections on the Gospel of Matthew
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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