PRAYER - STUDY - ACTION
Fourth Week of Advent, Dec. 19-24
Advent Acts of Decolonization: Becoming Messengers of Peace & Justice
Friday, December 17, 2021
Greetings of peace!

To open the Advent season, Lauren Bailey invited us to Decolonize the Season of both Thanksgiving and Advent. As we moved into the second week of Advent, Johnny Zokovitch shared a personal experience of being Empowered for the Inner and Outer Work of Decolonization. Last week, in her Advent reflection, Michelle Sherman called on our community to Center Indigenous Voice and Images.

As we enter the fourth and final week of this Advent season, I hope you will prayerfully return to each of these thoughtful reflections and let them enrich your Advent preparation for the coming of God's reign of peace and justice.

In some traditions, the fourth Advent candle is known as the "angel candle". As I write this reflection, I can't help but notice the abstract, faceless, glass-and-wire angel perched on top of my family tree, representing our typical view of God's messengers: aesthetically inoffensive, with long white robes and a thin halo floating above a perfectly round face.

But angels in Scripture are often something very different. Known as aggeloi (messengers) in Greek, their presence is not often quiet and calm. When the Holy One's messengers appear to shepherds in the book of Luke, their message is jubilant and exclamatory: "Good news of great joy for all the people." They sing:

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace among those whom God favors!"
God's messengers don't proclaim an inoffensive or neutral Divine love. They make a radical demand, rooted in radical love: peace in the lives of those favored by God. They appear among shepherds to proclaim peace to these poor, itinerant Jewish workers who likely know little peace under the day-to-day violence of military occupation. God's messengers speak peace to those that liberation theologian James Cone called "the forgotten and the abused, the marginalized and despised."

In this Advent season, where can we hear God's messengers speaking peace and demanding loving transformation? God's messengers appear in the places that power has told us to look away from. They are crying out from Palestinian families fleeing homes bulldozed with our tax dollars. They are crying out from prison cells and ICE detention centers, expanded under bipartisan support for racist oppression and suppression. They are crying out from factories, as union workers say "no more" to oppression and exploitation. They are crying out from Indigenous communities that have survived centuries of abuse at the hands of our Church and nation. They are crying out from Black communities demanding reckoning and racial repair.

God's messengers are crying out good news of great joy for all of us. In the words of Arundhati Roy, they are crying out that "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

Pax Christi USA, let us hear God's messengers among us, and let us too, become messengers of Christ's peace and liberation.
In peace,

John Noble
Development Director, Pax Christi USA
PRAYER
From Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody:
The Making of a Black Theologian
by James H. Cone
I have spent a lifetime pointing out the hypocrisy and mendacity of the white church in a white-dominated society, and at the same time raising up and exalting the voices and experiences of the oppressed. I write out of my experience as an African American growing up in segregated Arkansas and out of a deep theological conviction that the true power of the Christian gospel lies in its clear call for liberation of the oppressed and a fierce condemnation of their oppressors.
I write on behalf of all those whom the Salvadoran theologian and martyr Ignacio Ellacuría called 'the crucified peoples of history'. I write for the forgotten and the abused, the marginalized and despised. I write for those who are penniless, jobless, landless, all those who have no political or social power. I write for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and those who are transgender. I write for immigrants stranded on the U.S. border and for undocumented farmworkers toiling in misery in the nation's agricultural fields. I write for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, on the West Bank, and in East Jerusalem. I write for Muslims and refugees who live under the terror or war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. And I write for all people who care about humanity.

I believe that until Americans, especially Christians and theologians, can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with 'recrucified' black bodies hanging from lynching trees, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.

Questions for prayer and reflection:

Cone identifies himself as a writer and messenger on behalf of "the crucified people of history."

  • What communities am I a messenger for?
  • What communities have brought me a challenging message I needed to hear?
  • In Advent, how can my work and my message center those "who are penniless, jobless, landless, all those who have no political or social power"?
>> Celebrate the joy of this season with us on Thursday, December 23rd at our monthly PAX Mass. Celebrate the imminent birth of Jesus with Pax Christi USA members from across the nation by wearing your festive attire, bringing out the decorations, and sharing your favorite ornament. We're excited to have Fr. Rocco Puopolo of PC Massachusetts join us as celebrant. Click here to register & look for more information on the website this week.

>> Join us this coming Monday evening, December 20th, over Zoom from 8:30-9pm for our final Advent evening prayer service with Pax Christi USA members from around the nation. Click here to register.
STUDY
Black Love inspired me.
Making these portraits renewed my spirit.
by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, NPR
(Wednesday), Black feminist activist bell hooks died in her home in Kentucky. To honor hooks' legacy of connecting the works of love to the works of justice, we offer this photo story on Black Love from Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, who was inspired by bell hooks' writings.

It was pleasing to see during the height of the pandemic so many people in the digital space were leaning in and exploring ideas about love with hooks' work as a reference. And specifically regarding the reckoning and uprisings around race in this country and abroad, and knowing that there is "There can be no love without justice...abuse and neglect negate love," as hooks states in her book, that there was a collective centering of love.

I knew then that once the world opened back up, I would endeavor to see how people were approaching and experiencing love and how this might look in photographs.

>> Read this reflection for the 4th Sunday of Advent, December 19th, by former Pax Christi USA National Council Chair Cathy Woodson.
ACTION
Starting December 20: Join the International
Week of Action to Defund the Coastal GasLink Pipeline
AN INTERNATIONAL WEEK OF ACTION FROM OUR FRIENDS AT CHRISTIAN PEACEMAKER TEAMS: Banks and private equity companies are pouring billions on a massive fracked gas pipeline to cross Wet’suwet’en territory: Coastal GasLink. 

Indigenous Hereditary chiefs and supporters have responsibilities to defend the sacred, pristine headwaters of the Wedzin Kwa, in Wet’suwet’en law. They hold uninterrupted title to the land, in colonial law. For peacefully acting in accordance with the law and defending our shared future, land defenders, allies and journalists were removed at gunpoint. 

Banks and investors bankroll the violence it will take to complete and operate Coastal GasLink. It’s time to tell them that no investment is worth damaging the lands and waters of Wet’suwet’en Yintah and the climate all of us share.

The week of December 20th Indigenous land defenders are calling for a week of action calling out the corporate giants behind Coastal GasLink; here are some ways you can get involved!

Resources and Action Planning Tips from Banking on a Better Future:

  • Find an solidarity action near you or register your own event by clicking on this link!
  • Not sure where to start? Check out the action planning toolkit at this link.
  • If you do plan an action, you can use this Social Media Toolkit to promote leading up to and during the action.
  • At this link, you can find a toolkit to contact local media and alert them to your action ahead of time!
  • Remember to invite your friends, Indigenous groups whose land you are on, and local groups to your action.
PAX CHRISTI USA TURNS 50 IN 2022!
If you can make a special contribution to our 2021 Advent-Christmas Appeal in celebration of our upcoming 50th anniversary, we'd be so grateful! 
Just click on the donation button to the right
to give securely & quickly online. Thanks!!