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What a joy it was to take part in the recently concluded 27th Annual Convention of my colleagues in the Catholic Biblical Association of the Philippines (CBAP), held at the Philippine Bible Society. It was especially heartwarming to have in our company fellow biblical scholars from Protestant and Evangelical churches, sharing in our common love for the Scriptures and our commitment to making the Word of God speak meaningfully to the world today.
The theme of our convention was “Beat Swords into Plowshares. Be Peacemakers.” I delivered a keynote on the topic “Unarmed Struggle and Disarming Peace: Pope Leo XIV’s Biblical Theology of Peace.”
I began by recalling my youthful activist years, when I found the argument for armed struggle morally compelling in societies where the poor suffered violence through oppression, exploitation and systemic injustice. I have never ceased to believe that poverty itself can be a form of violence. But history has also taught me to ask: What happens when the oppressed finally acquire the gun? How do we prevent yesterday’s slaves from becoming tomorrow’s tyrants?
Drawing from Isaiah’s vision of swords being transformed into plowshares, I reflected on the alarming return of the logic of power and rearmament in our world today. Resources that could sustain life through food security, healthcare, education and care for creation are increasingly being redirected toward instruments of destruction.
Pope Leo reminds us that Christian peace is not passive resignation. It calls for an unarmed struggle against injustice—a struggle that refuses to reproduce the very violence it seeks to overcome. Jesus’ command to put away the sword finds its deepest meaning in the Cross, where he takes upon himself the consequences of human sin without returning evil for evil.
The Risen Christ still bears his wounds, but he does not turn them into weapons. He comes to his frightened disciples with the greeting, “Peace be with you” (Jn 20:19).
Perhaps this is the challenge before us, especially as people entrusted with interpreting the Scriptures: to help liberate the struggle for justice from the logic of vengeance, and to ensure that the Word of God is never turned into a weapon against another people.
As St. Paul reminds us, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21).
That is the unarmed struggle. And perhaps only such a struggle can lead us to a truly disarming peace.
