Our faith never seems to let us rest. There is always something calling for our attention, attracting the need of our prayers.

Because we imitate Christ in loving all of our brothers and sisters, especially those most in need, we can never simply close in on ourselves or just our family. The Holy Spirit, given to us in baptism and confirmation, moves us to be concerned for others, even others in different parts of the world.

Recently, our faith has moved us to be concerned for our fellow Christians and Catholics, and for members of other religious minorities, living in Iraq.

Two weeks ago we offered prayers for those suffering people at every weekend Mass. This weekend, at the request of the bishops’ conference, we have taken up a collection to offer material help to those who are suffering or who have become refugees because of the religious persecution in Iraq and Syria.

As Americans, we have been further drawn into events in that part of the world. Following the outcry in the aftermath of the beheadings of two American journalists, and during the very week when we recalled the tragic events of 9/11, President Obama announced a renewed American military engagement in Iraq in order to defeat the Islamist militants seeking to reconstitute the Muslim Caliphate known as ISIS.

Once again, as a nation and as people of faith, we confront the issue of war and peace. And so we might ask, how are we to live our faith before such a painful and on-going challenge to religious freedom, human dignity and civilization itself?

Pope Francis has spoken out a number of times on the current threats emanating from the Middle East. It is important to ponder what he has said on various occasions so that we can benefit from his full spiritual guidance for us.

For example, just last week, celebrating Mass on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, the Holy Father said starkly, “War is madness.” He went on to summarize the uncaring attitude of those who foster the widespread killing that has marked modern warfare as that of Cain when he had killed Abel, “What does it matter to me? Am I my brother’s keeper?”

But in his press conference on the return flight following his recent visit to Korea, when asked about the atrocities in Iraq, he noted that humanity has a right to stop an unjust aggressor so that he may not commit more evil. In a letter to Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, Pope Francis called for the protection for those threatened by violence and for other necessary assistance to be given to them.

When we take these comments all together, I think we find a reflection of our Catholic understanding of war and peace, of good and evil. War is one of the great plagues of the human race. Seemingly an unending consequence of original sin, war results in terrible suffering and the deaths not just of enemies but of someone’s fathers and mothers, sons and daughters.

Whether a combatant or a civilian, each casualty of war is a human person made in the image and likeness of God. Our first inclination must always be to seek peace, to avoid war wherever possible, and to pray for those who wage it and who suffer as a consequence.

But Pope Francis’ comments also place the justice of military action in a further and very real context of good and evil. If an unjust aggressor is not stopped, the innocent suffer and die. The innocent have a right to call upon and receive the assistance of others so that they and their rights might be protected.

In that context, military actions, carried out with rightness of intention and motive have a sad but needed place in a broken world. Catholic thinkers from St. Augustine through St. Thomas Aquinas to Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have understood this even as they worked and prayed for peace.

Those who bear the responsibility of conducting or avoiding military action, especially in the current context of terrorism, bear a heavy burden. In the end, after prayer and human efforts, decisions about when to commence such actions, when to cease, and what those actions should consist of  are both difficult and terrible to make. The words of Pope Francis remind us of needing the guidance of God so that any such action might reflect His own mercy, as well as His justice.

Please pray for peace. Pray for those who are suffering injustice in Iraq and Syria. And pray also for the justice and right judgment of those who decide upon the military actions directed to, in the words of Pope Francis, “stop the unjust aggressor … so that he does not do (more) evil.”