Thomas Merton's Prayer for Peace (a choral work)

When I pray for peace, I pray God to pacify not only the Russians and the Chinese, but above all my nation and myself.

When I pray for peace, I pray to be protected not only from the Russians but also from the folly and blindness of my own country.

I am praying that both we and the Russians may somehow be restored to sanity and learn how to work out our problems, as best we can, together, instead of preparing for global suicide.

Every form of healthy human contact with Russia, and above all China, is to be encouraged. We have got to see each other as people and not as demons.

What is the use of the exhortations to “pray for peace”, and then spending billions of dollars on atomic submarines, thermonuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles?

The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves. There is in reality, not the slightest logical reason for war, and yet why the whole world is plunging headlong into frightful destruction!

The danger to the whole world is the fact that today the economic life of the more highly developed nations is centered largely on the production of weapons, missiles and other engines of destruction.

We have to consider the hate propaganda. We have to recognize the implications of politicians who promote policies of hate.

The motives for promoting nuclear armament mask a horrible, indeed diabolical, danger to mankind.

These people, however sincere may be their motives, tend to be prejudiced in favor of everything that endangers the peace of the world.

The great problem we face is NOT RUSSIA, but war itself. War is the main enemy and we are not going to make sense unless we see that.

We have created for ourselves a suitable enemy, a scapegoat in whom we have invested all the evil in the world. He is the cause of every wrong. He is the fomenter of all conflict. If he can only be destroyed, conflict will cease, evil will be done with.

We tend by our very passivity and fatalism to cooperate with the destructive forces that are leading inexorably to war.

We prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideals of our enemies.

The duty of a Christian in this crisis is to strive with all his power and intelligence…. to do the one task which God has imposed upon us in the world today. That task is to work for the total abolition of war.