March, 25, is the feast of the Annunciation. 
   Our Lady is the Queen of Peace, the Mother of the Prince of Peace. Her Immaculate Heart understood what the human mind, crippled by original Sin, can never understand. Her wisdom is God’s wisdom; her love is his love. Without God, and his Holy Mother, humanity is condemned to destroy itself, as history has repeatedly shown.
   In 1991, both Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa begged the elder President Bush to refrain from war with Iraq. “War is always a failure,” the Pope wrote. In 2003, John Paul pleaded with the younger President Bush not to attack Bagdad. For a man of faith, the displaced, refugees and every victim, each one of them, is “beloved.” Only love can see the human faces in war; only faith can illuminate the intellect towards a real solution in difficult conflicts. Human reason must submit itself to the corrective influence of faith in order to succeed. 
   For its part, the regime in Iran and its extension in Lebanon, is ready to pit his country as well as Lebanon and its people, against the entire American military, effectively using his own citizens and the people of Lebanon, as human shields in a futile and ridiculous attempt to maintain his own petty power. Iran cannot win this war, but neither can the American Military. Everyone will lose if we depend on mere human intelligence and now artificial computing! to solve this problem. Only the intellect informed by faith and charity can see the path to a real solution. This primacy of God’s wisdom over human wisdom bears on the current question of the military strike against Iran. God’s Church teaches that war must be a last resort, after all possible diplomatic negotiations have failed. War is an evil so great that scarcely any other evil justifies it. If men use only their own intellects, however, they will frequently resort to war; if men use their intellects assisted by God’s counsels, war will be a relatively rare occurrence in human history.