Fr. Charlie McCarthy’s Talk on “The Nonviolent Jesus” at the Beatitudes Center, Sat. Feb. 14, 2026
On the Nonviolent Jesus
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
“In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God;
And the Word was God.
All things were made through Him and without Him nothing would have been made. In him was Life, and that Life was the Light of all humanity. It was the true Light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1ff).
In the contemporary world the word ‘nonviolence’ has an ever expanding number of indefinite meanings. A word, however, with an indefinite number of meanings is not a word. It is at most a piece of propaganda phonetics. For the most part today, to say a person or group is nonviolent is to try to persuade others that they are the good guys and gals in a conflict, while glossing over or ignoring all the evidence of their past and present uses of violence and their preparations and willingness in thought, word and deed to employ violence in the future, if they decide violence is needed or is the best option to serve their interests, e.g., survival of some type.
Historical examples of this wide-open employment of the word nonviolence would be, a peace and justice group that calls itself nonviolent and bestows its Nonviolent Man of the Year Award on a dictator who is openly murdering his own people, but who has become the darling of the liberal press, another example would be an institutional Church that calls itself nonviolent, but which is armed to the teeth, even having its own army always at the ready to kill, and justifying and permitting its membership going to the ends of the earth to kill people on behalf of the parasite elites of the world, that simultaneously tells the oppressed to reject violence, a third example of the open ended use of the word nonviolence would be a public demonstration populated by people internally ridden with animus towards another person or group while externally doing what they can to publicly demean that person or group.
These are but a few examples of what have been called by persons, groups and mass media nonviolent actions or events. On smaller or larger scales this is why today the word nonviolence is a smorgasbord word, no longer a carrier of a consistent community recognized meaning, but only a putty word, a piece of 1984 malleable newspeak verbiage.
Nonviolence is not a word that can be found in either the Old or New Testament. That does not mean in Christianity that it cannot accurately communicate what the Bible teaches. The battle over whether Christians could use only Biblical words to communicate the truth of God through Jesus as remembered in the Bible was settled with the approval of the word Homoousios, [Eng. consubstantial, of the same substance or being (as the Father)] in the Creed of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. So, nonviolence could be a word that Christians could employ to communicate the truth of the Nonviolent person and the message of Jesus in the Gospels. To do this, however, it would have to be publicly defined according to, and within the entirety of the person of Jesus and His Way in the Gospels—and nothing else.
There are many forms of human activity to which the word nonviolence is presently attached by people, as we have just noted. There is also Hindu nonviolence, Hebrew nonviolence, Muslim nonviolence, atheist nonviolence, humanitarian nonviolence, etc. I recently saw on television an advertisement for a show about zombie nonviolence. My concern in what is to follow is not to dispute or disparage any other person’s or group’s belief in what they call nonviolence. My purpose here is only to try to present an accurate, objectively verifiable content for nonviolence from the Four Gospels as the essential content of Christian nonviolence, Gospel nonviolence or Jesus’ nonviolence, all of which are synonymous terms. I also intend here to delineate what cannot be Gospel Nonviolence even if Christians are engaged in it and name it Christian nonviolence. Finally, I wish to explain why it is of Eternal importance not to alter or to ignore Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel regarding nonviolence.
Let me begin this clarification of thought on Gospel Nonviolence with a little story from my little life. In 1979 I brought Lanza del Vasto (1901-1981) from France to the U.S, to direct some conferences on nonviolence. He was known in nonviolent circles as Shantidas, a name that means in Hindi, Servant of Peace, given to him by Gandhi when he spent a significant amount of time with him after receiving his Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Pisa. Theophane, a priest at the Trappist Monastery in Spencer, MA, asked if I would bring Shantidas to speak to the monks at his Monastery. I did.
During the Q&A session after his presentation, one of the monks asked, “Shantidas, why do you keep returning to focus on Jesus’ nonviolence, when in your talk you praised so many other great nonviolent people, Christian and non-Christian: Buddha, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Tolstoy, Danilo Dolci, Martin Luther King, Jr. etc.?“
Shantidas, who was a Catholic Christian responded, “On the immense Lake of Life there are many, known and unknown people, who are genuinely committed to nonviolence. Each person so committed reflects a flash of the awesome luminosity of the sun in a momentary new sparkle on the waters of the Lake. Some sparkles are brighter than others. Buddha was a major sparkle, as was St. Francis of Assisi, and Mahatma Gandhi. As is your Dorothy Day. There are also untold numbers of anonymous believers in nonviolence, which history, written by human beings, intentionally ignores. But which on the actual Lake of Life, that is, in lived human existence as opposed to merely recorded human existence, they also sparkle, some as brilliantly as Buddha or St. Francis, others dimly.”
He continued,
“Now Jesus who is nonviolent was also a major sparkle on the Lake of Life. I personally think He is the most luminous sparkle of all. But, that is not the primary reason I continually returned to Him in my reflection. The reason I always come back to Him is, because while He is an awe inspiring sparkle on the Lake of Life, He is also the Sun!”
Shantidas here is saying precisely what the Foundation Documents of Christianity, The Four Gospel, consistently present and proclaim Jesus to be from His Nativity to His Crucifixion and Resurrection. He is the Sun, “the Light of lights, the true Light that comes into the darkness and who enlightens everyone who comes into the world.” In time and space and in human history, He is indeed a magnificent sparkle, but the Gospels also tell us He is the Incarnation of the Word of God the Source of all that sparkles, who was before time began and will still be after “the heavens and the earth have passed away.”
The Gospels proclaim that Jesus is “The Word of God, through whom all things were made” (Jn 1:1-3). He explicitly says, “I come only to do the will of my Father in heaven” (Jn 6:38). Hence, when Jesus choose to be nonviolent, it is because God is nonviolent, otherwise He would not be doing “the will of His Father in heaven.” Moreover, since as the New Testament proclaims “God is love (agape)” (1Jn 4:6), Jesus must be choosing Divine Love or He would not be “doing the will of His Father in heaven.” He must be choosing thoughts, words and deeds of Nonviolent Love, if He is to be doing only the will of His Father in heaven, who is God, who is love and who is nonviolent. So, what sparkles on the Lake of Life from the Eternal Word made flesh, Jesus, and in every human being who reflects the Son to others on the Lake of Life is not merely nonviolence, but is rather the Nonviolent Love of all at all times.
The incarnation of God, who is Nonviolent Love, has as its ultimate purpose opening up the possibility of human beings being saved from evil and death and becoming by adoption what Jesus is by nature, that is, Divine, that is God!
Remember, at the pouring of the water and wine into the chalice at the offertory of Eucharist, the priest prays, “ By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the Divinity of Christ who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.” Or, as this was articulated by St. Athanasius 1800 years ago and is still so stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Part I, Prof. of Faith, section 2, article 3, para. 460 and its footnote #81): “God became human so that human beings could become God.” Both of articulation are just restatements of 2 Peter1:4, “through Him we may become partakers of His divinity.”
The Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent Love towards all at all times is not just another moral rule put out there to make life more burdensome for people. It is the Way to become God! (If this sound strange or even idolatrous, do ponder prayerfully my writing, The Nonviolent Spirituality of St. Maximus the Confessor, which can be found on my website.)
There is infinitely more at stake while standing in the grocery line than getting quickly to the cash register. Likewise, there is infinitely more at stake when standing in the protest line than getting some person out of a political office who is engaged in wrong doing.
In monotheism God is completely, absolutely One. There are no parts to God. In formal Catholic theology the name for this is the Divine Simplicity of God. God’s attributes are identical with His essence. God does not possess attributes, like love, holiness, mercy, power, nonviolence and wisdom as additions to His Being or Self. Rather, God is His attributes. He is Love. He is Holiness. He is Power. He is Nonviolent. He is Mercy. His attributes are in reality One with His existence.
Where God’s attributes are present God is present. The Nonviolent Christian knows or should know that his or her Nonviolent Love towards all in all circumstances is the active presence of God in that portion of the world, which he or she inhabits. If the Christian by not loving as Jesus loves takes away God’s presence from the only place where he or she can put it, they have come between their neighbor and God and God’s saving Love in the Nonviolent Jesus Christ. That is not a trivial matter. It is a horrendous price to make other’ pay so one can get to the cash register first!
Without choosing the Nonviolent Love (agape) that the All Holy One embodies in the Word made flesh, what is called nonviolence cannot be reflected to serve and save others, just as anything without Christlike love is without the sparkle that saves (1Cor 13:1ff). But, everything with Nonviolent Christlike Love is God Present in a most unique modality, which is the fruit of a person uniting his or her will with God’s will, that is, with God, and thereby releasing God with His Attributes, which are Him, into a particular moment and place in time and space.
So the Nonviolent Jesus is precisely that Light that everyone can turn into a sparkle in his or her own time, place and being on the Lake of Life by simply choosing to incarnate acts of Christlike Nonviolent Love toward a friend or an enemy or a stranger.
That Light is Life itself, that is, it is the Source and being of each person’s very existence, each person’s very being. Living in and by this Light, which is God offering participation in His Life, requires nothing more and nothing less than choosing to relate to people as Jesus chose to relate to people, choosing to act in the moment in a thought, a word or a deed, whether in a protest line or in a grocery store line, in accordance with the Light’s call in the Gospels, in accordance with the Nonviolent Jesus’ cry from the heart, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
If a person does this, his or her time at a political protest will always be successful and have good temporal and eternal consequence, regardless of how things appear to turn out at the moment on the empirical surface of existence. Likewise will that be the case for a person’s time in the grocery store line! Neither will ever be a waste of time, if the time is spent manifesting to others the saving Spirit of Christlike Love. Such a choice for the use of one’s time, where ever and whenever it is made will always have good consequences. Dorothy Day notes, “Our faith tells us that what is morally right cannot be pragmatically wrong. The good deed will ultimately have good results.” Why did she believe this? She believed it because of Jesus’ cross and its ultimate consequence, the empty tomb.
Because loving as the Nonviolent Jesus Christ Loves is so important, because making loving as the Nonviolent Jesus Loves a habitus of mind and heart and behavior is so important, because making loving as Jesus Loves a Way of being rather than just a political tactic is so important to life and meaning in time and in Eternity, over the decades I have often suggested to folks who have attended my retreats and conferences on Gospel Nonviolent Love that they consider praying slowly and with sincerity the following morning offering when their feet first hit the floor in the A.M.:
“Each thought, each word, each deed of mine, I truly want to be an act of Christlike Love Divine, and everything I think, say or do I want to be my God for love of you.”
For my own awareness each morning I add the reflection,
“Light always overcomes darkness, but always does it gently.”
Each of us, including myself, whether in the grocery store line or on the picket line can at any moment fail to live according to the Way revealed by Jesus, our Lord, God and Savior, the incarnate Word of God in the Gospels. The difficulties, indeed the continuing failure and backsliding in trying daily to conform one’s life with the Way of the Nonviolent Jesus in the Gospels in a world and in institutional Churches that are unsympathetic, even hostile, to the Nonviolent Way of Jesus can be experienced as overwhelming.
7X70 times a day, or more, a person committed to the Nonviolent Jesus and His Nonviolent Way can think, say or do something that misses the mark in struggling to faithfully follow that Way. When this happens I try to remember what St. Basil, the founder of monasticism in the East taught his monks: “A good monk falls and gets up, falls and gets up, falls and gets up. A bad monk falls, calls it good, and does not get up.”
Gospel Nonviolent Love in the grocery line or on the protest line exists within the context of the entire Gospel, not independent of it. Repentance and God’s never withheld forgiveness of sins are as much a part of Jesus’ revelation in the Gospels as is Nonviolent Love of all in all circumstances being the Way of God, the Way of Jesus and the Way by which God saves humanity.
To “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” does not mean for fallible, sinful human beings, perfection in execution. This is near impossible, which is why forgiveness 7X70 times from God and among human beings is an intrinsic piece of Jesus’ Good News.
However, perfection in commitment, fidelity to Jesus and His truth in the Gospels, is possible. This means, I can and will continue to believe in and to believe Jesus and follow the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels even if I stumble and fall three times or 300,000 times. I will not lie to myself and call evil good. I will not say what is not your Way, is your Way, that violence is nonviolence or that there is a “but,” an exception to your teaching. I shall continue to follow it. I will simply in total confidence when I fall ask for your love and forgiveness, and get back to continuing to follow the Nonviolent One and His Way to the empty tomb and to Eternal Oneness with God as His adopted son or daughter.
There is too much at stake for the self and for all humanity for a Christian or for the Church to do otherwise than to unwaveringly struggle to live the clear, majestic, mysterious and merciful truth of the teaching of Jesus in the Gospel. There is certainly no place for the pimp-squeak ideas and ways of this or that creature to replace the truth of the Creator and His Way as revealed by God Himself Incarnate, Jesus, in the Gospels. Still less is there any justification for dragging others into one’s homemade concoctions and erroneous notions of the way to conquer evil and death, the way of salvation. There is infinitely too much at stake in time and in eternity, on earth and in heaven, for creating and perpetuating distorted presentations of Jesus’ teaching of Nonviolent Love of all, friends and enemies, as infallibly revealed by Him in the Gospels.
What is at stake in time and in eternity is bringing the saving power of Christlike Nonviolent Love, of God, into human existence by a thought, word or deed, as opposed to bringing something that one considers just as good into existence by a thought, word or deed. What is at stake is the releasing of the saving power of God’s Nonviolent Love, of God’s Presence, through the Nonviolent Jesus and His Way of Nonviolent Love for all in the world to see, to choose, and to be brought to Eternal Life by.
Only God can conquer what in philosophy are termed the twin irrationalities of human existence, evil and death. Only God knows the Way to Eternal Life. In the Gospels God, who is Love, reveals in Jesus that He loves humanity and will deliver humanity from its bondage to evil and death through Christlike Love and through nothing else. Jesus presents in his words and life not only a good way of doing things, not only an ideal to be executed whenever it is convenient, but the only way of doing what he did. He communicates first to His disciples and through them to humanity that the power which destroys all other powers is the power of Love, the love of God revealed and active in Him. That power of Nonviolent Love towards all is seen in the death of Jesus, most clearly in the Garden of Gethsemane at His arrest and on the Cross at His forgiving and praying for His murderers. However, it is seen more fully in His resurrection.
Jesus resurrection is unambiguously attested to in the Gospels by the empty tomb narratives. But the resurrection is also the mystery of the risen Jesus being with and in His community and with His disciples “all days even until the consummation of the age.” The continuing active loving presence of the risen Nonviolent Jesus in the Christian community after His Ascension was in one fashion or another universally experienced by the early Christian Community. This makes basic human sense, since love is the communication of self, and love does not want the self to be separated from the one or ones He loves.
Jesus is not a dead hero to be worshipped. Jesus lives! The Christian is not identified with God who is love in Jesus unless he or she is identified with Jesus risen and actively exercising the utterly incomprehensible saving power of that Love, which He proclaimed by His words and deeds when on earth, namely, the Nonviolent Love of all under all circumstances.
Being an agent of the “Father of all,” of Jesus and of that saving Nonviolent Love is what is at stake in not substituting something one thinks is just as good as Christlike Love, especially when fair weather becomes foul. Sticking with the choice of Christlike Love in faith and trust to the end, as did Jesus, is what the Christian is given the gift of Faith to do, not simply for his or her own good, but for the salvation of others.
Let me conclude with an historical event that might illuminate why an unwavering commitment to be faithful to the micro-deed of Christlike Love is simultaneously to be faithful to the Power and Wisdom of God, trusting that Jesus knew what He was talking about when on earth, and is presently actively working through that same Nonviolent Christlike Love to bring all Home to be One with God forever.
Decades ago a Catholic missionary Sister, who at that time had been working among and with some of the poorest and most oppressed folks on the planet for about twenty years and who was herself a very bright sparkle of unarmed love on the Lake of Life, began to write a letter to a person in Boston on the 27th of November 1980. For reasons that she records in her letter, she was only finishing the letter on December 1. Another Sister mailed it for her that day.
Here is a verbatim excerpt from that private letter that I do not think has before been in the public domain. The emphatic emphasis in the letter is there as she wrote it. In her letter Sister is writing about people forgotten by the world and cruelly abused by government. They are the people that she daily tries to love and care for, serve and help, live with and mourn with and pray with. She writes,
“The people are living a way of the cross of death + fear for their children. One strong lesson that comes forth to me is that there MUST BE A NEW LIFE of LOVE, JOY, HOPE – RESURRECTION. All of these precious people shot up, cut up with machetes cannot have laid down their lives in vain. I believe in life after death as I never did before.” Maura
Sister Maura (Clarke) was beaten, raped and murdered by the military in El Salvador the next day, December 2, AD 1980.
