On today’s new episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I speak with my friend Robert Jonas about the legendary spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, who died 30 years ago on September 26, 1996.

Henri and I corresponded regularly for many years, right up until his death. Much to my surprise, he offered steadfast support for my peacework, especially when I was in jail for my plowshares action, when he wrote me every week. I thought it would be wonderful to welcome one of his best friends, Robert Jonas, to speak about Henri’s life, teachings, and lessons.

Robert Jonas received his doctorate in education from Harvard University and has a Masters in theology from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. He is the author/editor of The Essential Henri Nouwen, (Shambhala), as well as Henri Nouwen: Spiritual Master (Orbis) and Rebecca (Crossroad). His latest book is My Dear Far-Nearness: The Holy Trinity as Spiritual Practice (Orbis).

“Henri lived in the in-between spaces of academia and the spiritual life,” Jonas says. “He was like a spelunker: he wanted to dig down deep beneath the psyche and the soul. He was convinced that we cannot help other people unless we accept our own woundedness. "

"When we spoke, we could be honest with each other about our woundedness; we could actually name the wounds to each other… He wanted us to take responsibility for the things that are hurting us, to let the spirit come with us, to know that the spirit is with us, that we are never alone, that we are infinitely loved, that we are God’s beloved.”

Henri’s best-sellers include The Wounded Healer; Out of Solitude: Reaching Out; In the Name of Jesus; Return of the Prodigal Son; Can You Drink the Cup; Life of the Beloved; Our Greatest Gift; and The Inner Voice of Love.

Follow me on Substack https://fatherjohndear.substack.com/ and find me on FB and IG.

And check out my two Henri books, The Road to Peace and Peacework.

beatitudescenter.org

Onward in peace with the nonviolent Jesus!

🌻, John

This week I speak with my friend Fr. Greg Boyle, one of the most well known and beloved religious leaders in the world. A Jesuit priest, he has spent decades accompanying and working with young people and gang members in Los Angeles, and creating new alternatives with them.

Fr. Greg is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries and Homeboy Global Network with 300 organizations in the US and 50 outside the country.

It is the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, and former pastor of Dolores Mission Church, the poorest church in the city. Between 1988-1998, there were close to a 1000 people per year killed in that L.A. area from gang-related crime.

His books include: Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion; Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship; Creating a Culture of Tenderness: Embracing Our Kinship with All of Life; The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness; and Forgive Everyone Everything.

I ask him about his motto: “We are all unshakably good – no exceptions. We belong to each other – with no exceptions.” “We are trying to offer a model of community, being connected and relational wholeness,” Fr. Greg said. "There's no such thing as a bad person. We’re all good people, and we’re all sick trying to get well."

"Gang violence is all about a lethal absence of hope."

So we’re trying to nurture a movement where people invest in each other and with folks on the margins.

Fr. Boyle tells me about the four things Jesus took seriously, and what the gang members have taught him about God's unconditional love.

Greg said so many amazing things: “We've lost our confidence in love and the God of love is hoping we will regain that. It's important to find the larger love that animates you. It's always about going forward. Love is always the next thing to do, one loving foot in front of the next."

"The point of the love of God is to disarm us and lead us to be peacemakers.”

Listen in, be inspired, and share the podcast with your friends.

Onward in peace with the nonviolent Jesus!

🌻, Fr. John

www.homeboyindustries.org

beatitudescenter.org

This episode is dedicated to the victims of September 11, 2001, and to the countless families whose lives were forever altered by that day.

As we reflect on a message of profound peace, healing, and the pursuit of a nonviolent world, we pause to honor the memory of those we lost. May their legacies inspire us to reach across divides, comfort those who mourn, and work tirelessly toward a future defined by compassion, reconciliation, and enduring peace.

This week, I’m offering two special episodes of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast” to commemorate 9/11.

Earlier, on Monday, I posted Part 1 of 2, my conversation with my friend Colleen Kelley, co-founder of Sept. 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

Today, in Part 2 of 2, I share my own experience as the Red Cross coordinator of chaplains after 9/11.

As some of you know, I was scheduled to have breakfast with my parents that morning in the restaurant on the top of the World Trade Center, but they changed their plans at the last minute. I went down to help and was asked very quickly by the Red Cross to become the local coordinator of all the 550 chaplains at the Family Assistance Center where we served some 50,000 direct relatives of those who died in the two towers over the next three months. I also worked once or twice a week at Ground Zero, praying with and counseling rescue workers.

I tell about the many people I met, such as Neil, a Long Island Catholic, who came to the Center clutching a bag of hairs snatched from his missing brother-in-law’s comb, as DNA evidence. While he was filling out the paper, he was told his relative’s body was found. I prayed with him before he called his sister to tell her.

I also share stories of the many rescue workers I met at Ground Zero, such as the fireman who came scrambling down the smoking seven story Pile, ran up to me and said, “Father, quick, give me your blessing. I’m digging for my best friend.” Or the one who ran up to me and begged, “Father, please, teach me how to pray. We found the body of my friend yesterday, and I don’t know what to do.”

I conclude with reflections about my work organizing protests against the Afghanistan war, and where we are 25 years later. Thank you for listening.

PS. For the full story, read my autobiography, "A Persistent Peace."

beatitudescenter.org

johndear.org

Find me on Substack https://fatherjohndear.substack.com/

Onward in peace with the nonviolent Jesus!

🌻, God bless you, Fr. John

This week The Nonviolent Jesus podcast brings 2 special episodes:

Today (part 1 of 2), I speak with my friend Colleen Kelly, who lost her brother in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. A few years earlier, I had baptized Colleen’s daughter at a very happy family event.

On Thursday’s episode, (part 2 of 2), I’ll share my own stories as the Red Cross coordinator of chaplains at Ground Zero. You can also read more stories about this period of my life in my book "A Persistent Peace".

On September 11th, Colleen's brother Bill was at a one day conference at Windows on the World, on the top of the World Trade Center. In the awful days afterwards, she met with other family members to seek nonviolent alternatives to the cycles of violence, and to enhance civilian protection.

They formed “September 11th Families For Peaceful Tomorrows,” which has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Its name comes from the Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote, "Wars make poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."

These days, she continues to work with Peaceful Tomorrows in a variety of ways, including the pursuit of justice and accountability for the death of Bill and nearly 3000 others, by numerous visits to observe the military commissions at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba.

Colleen talks about her brother, the founding of “Peaceful Tomorrows,” her trips to Guantanamo, and their work marching for and promoting peace, even in Afghanistan.

We also talk about her amazing mother, who told me as we left Ground Zero how she felt about the bombing of Afghanistan, words that have stayed with me to this very day.

For the 25th anniversary, Colleen is organizing a peace walk on Sept. 10th from Union Square to Ground Zero where they will hold an evening vigil. www.peacefultomorrows.org

“Nonviolence is what Jesus taught and it is hard to believe but until we all truly believe it and make that leap, we are stuck in this inhuman world,” she says.

Listen in and be inspired!

God bless you,

🌻 Fr. John

One of the key prophets, saints, teachers and models for me is Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador who was assassinated while saying Mass in San Salvador on March 24, 1980.

I lived and worked in a refugee camp in 1985, and traveled back nearly twenty times, including his beatification Mass in San Salvador. To me, he is the epitome of the modern day prophet who denounces war, poverty, and killing, calls people to be converted to the nonviolent Jesus, and announces the coming of God’s reign of justice, disarmament and peace.

On this episode I speak with Professor Todd Walatka of Notre Dame, author of a new book, “Words of Life: The Preaching of St. Oscar Romero.”

Todd Walatka teaches about Catholic theology after Vatican II, Latin American theology, Catholic social teaching, and Christian spirituality. He is also the editor of Óscar Romero and Catholic Social Teaching, which examines the life of Romero in light of contemporary work for justice and human development.

“If you hear Romero's words or know anything about his life, you immediately think, ‘This is the gospel!’” Todd says. “Romero asked us: ‘What is the Good News today? What does it demand of our very lives today? Romero truly believed that the Word of God can change our lives.”

Discover more about Saint Oscar Romero here:

orbisbooks.org

beatitudescenter.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero

Come join me on Substack: https://substack.com/@fatherjohndear

🌻, John

On this episode of “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I speak with Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, a global movement to end discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities. Tim expanded the organization from one million athletes to over six million athletes in more than 170 countries around the world.

After passing on the CEO torch, he wondered how the spirit of the athletes of Special Olympics might provide a model for our divided world. He started a conversation with hundreds of young people, faith leaders, educators, philosophers, scientists, activists and political figures on how we might reclaim our common humanity.

He formed the nonprofit UNITE which uses what he calls the “Dignity Index,” a new tool to help Americans disagree without demonizing each other.

Tim went to Yale, got his Master's degree from Catholic University, and a Doctorate in Education from the University of Connecticut. Before joining the Special Olympics in 1996, he co-founded and currently chairs the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the leading school reform organization in the field of social and emotional learning (SEL).

On the side, he is a Hollywood producer of several films including “Amistad.”

He is coauthor of “Fully Alive – Discovering What Matters Most,” and co-editor of “The Call to Unite: Voices of Hope and Awakening.” In May, Notre Dame awarded him the Laetare Medal.

“My parents were innovation machines,” Tim tells me. “They were problem solvers.”

His mother started the Special Olympics by asking, "'What if we just spoke each others' language and ate each others’ food?’" That was peace-building.

Last year the volunteer army of human goodness created 80,000 Special Olympics events.

"Go to an event! There's a recognizable presence of human dignity and therefore divine energy. There's a different vibrational field. The Special Olympics is a peacemaking movement.” www.specialolympics.org

When I ask Tim about Unite and the Dignity Index, he says it’s based on the insight that “our problems are not based on our differences but how we treat each other when we differ. When we treat each other with dignity, we have a good chance of solving our problems. We try to learn how to treat each other with dignity and reduce contempt.”

Listen in as Tim describes various ways to respond to others in keeping with human dignity. God bless you!

🌻, John

beatitudescenter.org

Meet me over on Substack https://fatherjohndear.substack.com/

www.dignity.us

www.timothyshriver.com

This week I speak with David Beckmann, former president of Bread for the World, one of the best groups fighting poverty in the world (www.bread.org).

His many books include: Eden Revival; The Overseas List; Grace at the Table; Exodus from Hunger, and his latest book, “Poverty Abolitionists: Faith, activism, and Hope for Difficult Times. www.davidbeckmann.org

“In recent decades, the world has made dramatic progress against poverty. But now, the second Trump administration has pushed that progress into full reverse. I'm so appalled that we are systematically dismantling things that are important to the poor in the U.S. and the world. It's certainly possible to end poverty where starvation and malnutrition exist. We don't have to have millions of kids go without food in the U.S., yet we do.

“The most progressive community in the U.S. are atheists - they are not waiting for God to solve the world's problems. Our hope is built on Jesus' promise of the kingdom of God, but we have to do our share and advocate for justice and an end to poverty,” he says.

In the end, he calls us to “seek and form loving, justice-seeking churches; to think critically about our faith and the work to end poverty; and to open our hearts to God's universal, forgiving love. Those who imagine a loving, forgiving God—not a violent, punishing god--are more inclined to work for justice and the end of poverty.”

Listen in and be inspired to join the movement to abolish poverty!

www.beatitudescenter.org

Come join me on Substack: https://fatherjohndear.substack.com/

www.davidbeckmann.org

www.bread.org

🌻, John

On this week's episode of The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast, I reflect on Franz Jagerstatter, one of the most important saints in history.

In the late 1970s, while a student at Duke University, wondering what to do with my life, my grandmother gave me a pamphlet about Franz. I was amazed by the story of a young Austrian farmer, born on May 20, 1907, who in 1936 married Franziska, the local sacristan at their church in St. Radegund.

HIs wife, Franziska, was a saint, so he tried to become a saint too.

When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, nearly everyone in Austria supported the Nazis. In February 1943, Franz received a letter ordering him to turn himself in and join the Nazi military, where he would be sent off to the Russian front. He went and spoke with several priests and even the bishop. Each one of them said it was his duty as a Catholic to fight for Hitler. But what about Jesus? he asked them.

So Franz refused to fight, was arrested, imprisoned, taken to Berlin, brought before the Nazi high court, condemned to death for “undermining military morale,” and beheaded on August 9, 1943.

I’ve been studying him for decades, and in the 1990s, became a friend of his wife Franziska and family. In this episode, I review Franz’s life, my own experience with Franziska and his beatification in Austria, and some concluding lessons, which I hope will encourage you in your own commitment to the nonviolent Jesus.

I think Franz demonstrates a new political mysticism, a sanctity that is a threat to the empire and the culture of war.

I think this has to become the new norm, as it was in the early Church.

“As a Christian, I prefer to do my fighting with the Word of God and not with arms,” he wrote from prison. “We need no rifles or pistols for our battle, but instead spiritual weapons—and the foremost among these is prayer…Let us love our enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us. For love will conquer and will endure for all eternity. And happy are they who live and die in God’s love.”

beatitudescenter.org

orbisbooks.org

This week marks the 81st anniversary of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I plan to take part in several demonstrations in California as part of my ongoing penance, prayer and witness against nuclear weapons and God’s call for peace on earth.

I speak with my friend Jack Cohen-Joppa, who along with his wife, Felice, has published The Nuclear Resister newspaper since 1980.

With over 200 issues, they have chronicled over 100,000 anti-nuclear and anti-war civil disobedience actions and related prosecutions covering thousands of activists, and encouraged support for the women and men jailed and imprisoned for such nonviolent actions.

Their newspaper has tracked every public action that involved crossing a line against war and nuclear weapons, that is, every campaign, every local and regional grassroot effort, and the rise and fall of national movements. When you open its pages or study their website, you discover a whole world of peace activism that few know about.

It routinely documents nonviolent direct actions—including recent demonstrations at California's Vandenberg Space Force Base where activists protest the testing and modernization of nuclear missile systems.

Jack's nuclear education began in 1978 while participating in a year-long civil disobedience campaign at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant outside Denver, and standing trial with Daniel Ellsberg and eight others that autumn.

Theirs is a lifetime of steadfast resistance in campaigns at the Pentagon, Livermore Labs, Los Alamos Labs, the Nevada Test Site, the Trident submarine bases and the Plowshares

“We face a nuclear threat now that is comparable with the threat we faced during the Cold War,” Jack says. “Our challenge is to continue to delegitimize and stigmatize the building of nuclear weapons.

I am in touch with the people who believe that hope is a verb and take action. We believe that this is work worth doing.”

Listen in and discover an ongoing grassroots movement against nuclear weapons and get with the program.

Please visit their site at: www.nuclearresister.org

Supporters can sign up for action alerts, read chronicled histories of dissent, and find instructions on how to write letters of support to imprisoned peace activists.

For those of us who have spent time in jail and prison for civil disobedience against nuclear weapons, Jack and Felice are longtime faithful heroes.

He continues to study, write and speak publicly about nuclear issues.

Beatitudescenter.org

Follow me on Substack @FatherJohnDear

🌻, John

On this week's episode I reflect on the Gospel of John, chapter 11, the story of the raising of Lazarus, based on my book, Lazarus Come Forth!

I propose that John rewrote the Gospel story to portray Jesus as the God of life who calls humanity in the person of Lazarus out of the tombs of death, out of empire, violence and war, and command us to unbind humanity from the trappings of death and let humanity go free in the fullness of life and resurrection peace.

The message is: have nothing to do with death, with violence, injustice, war or anything that inflicts death on others. Instead, live life to the full, and help others live life to the full.

Possibly you'll recognize yourself in these scriptures:

• How the male disciples promise to walk with him but never show up;
• How the professional mourners weep over Lazarus, even though they just tried to stone Jesus to death;
• How Martha tries to stop Jesus’ nonviolent resistance;
• How Jesus announces, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever is fully alive here and now in the present moment of resurrection peace, and believes in me as I walk the way of life and nonviolence and confront the forces of death, will never die.” “Do you believe this?” he asks us.

As Jesus approaches the tomb, he issues three new commandments:

1. “Take away the stone!”
2. “Lazarus/Humanity come forth!”
3. “Unbind humanity and let him go free.”

Listen for my conclusion of this climactic call of John’s Gospel, and what our mission is today.

See what you think. I hope you like it.

My book is available here

More writings from me: beatitudescenter.org

You can find me on Substack https://fatherjohndear.substack.com/

🌻, John