“The followers of Jesus saw their abstention from bloodshed as central fidelity to his message. The kingdom he preached to them was not an earthly kingdom to be defended by earthly means. They strove to spread this kingdom of God, at the center of which was love. In the first four centuries after the resurrection of Jesus, ordinary human beings–fishermen, men and women who farmed the fields around the villages, weavers, dyers, tentmakers–took him at his word. They became a spectacle to the world by the ways in which they gave witness to his word.”

– Eileen Egan, co-founder of Pax Christi USA, in Peace Be With You (Orbis Books, 1999), 19.