What is peace? How can it be reflected in today's culture? A group of about 50 people from throughout the archdiocese addressed these and other peace-oriented questions during the one-day Southern California Pax Christi 2007 Assembly at Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles on Oct. 6.

The day concluded with a Mass celebrated by Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala, the bishop president of Pax Christi, USA.

Groups met with Jean Stokan, policy analyst for Pax Christi USA, for a series of three sessions to discuss "spiritual peace in a world divided by war, racism, poverty and violence."

Pax Christi is a national Catholic peace organization dedicated to promoting non-violence through prayer, study and action. Four years ago, Pax Christi USA celebrated the 20th anniversary of the United States bishops' peace pastoral letter, "The Challenge of Peace," by creating The Peoples' Peace Initiative, a series of discussions with the purpose of articulating the challenges to peace in the 21st century.

The results led to a workbook entitled "Called to Something New: A Peoples' Peace Initiative." The booklet is a series of questions that will be used across the country to gather information from parishioners to create a national peace initiative document.

According to Stokan, the information collected from the Los Angeles assembly will be combined with the national results to develop a final national peace initiative document which will be written in the next few years. Stokan said she hopes the national discussion sessions will do more than result in a document.

"It is two-fold purpose," she said. "It is to write a document, but it is also to invigorate peace and justice work at the grassroots level."

Father Chris Ponnet, pastor of St. Camillus Catholic Center and co-director of Pax Christi Los Angeles, said that his hope for the Saturday assembly was to gather people from throughout the archdiocese to contribute to the peach discussions. He said the event successfully brought people who had never been to a Pax Christi event before. His goal was not only for people to "get enriched" from the small group sessions but to help contribute to the national document.

"The longer term goal is to affirm and activate people against this war and against all forms of violence," Father Ponnet said.

Pax Christi member Sharon Estey, a parishioner of Holy Name of Mary Church, San Dimas, said she attended the event because she is "very interested in peace issues."

"I feel saddened in the way the war has developed," she said. "We also need to do something to look at the real reasons of poverty and disenfranchisement."

Estey said that she thought the Pax Christi event was "bringing the group together as a whole for an exchange of ideas."

Joanne Boubion, who attends the Catholic chapel at the McAllister Religious Center at Claremont Colleges, said she went to the workshop with her husband to get information on peace and justice issues.

"We are interested in the bishops' teaching --- the social justice issues for our times and we like to go to a place we know we will discuss that," Boubion said.

For her, participating in social justice issues is part of what she feels it means to be Catholic. Attending the assembly helped her to fulfill her mission.

"It has helped me to stay focused on seeking peace starting within myself, my family and my own small world and looking for hope," she said. "We are looking for hopeful ways to make a difference to take a stand --- to stand up and to be counted. It does give me hope to be in a group of like-minded, peaceful people."