A GLOBAL WITNESS TO RISING PEACE Stories of Courage, Mercy, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation What happens when war gives every reason to hate-but someone chooses another way? A young man in a red bandana turns back into the smoke of the World Trade Center to save strangers. A priest runs toward the fire because the frightened and dying should not face their final moments alone. A nine-year-old girl burned by napalm carries the scars of war into adulthood-and discovers the freedom to forgive. A Vietnamese bishop endures thirteen years of captivity and discovers that prison walls can confine the body without imprisoning hope. These are the stories at the heart of Rising Peace, Volume I. Across centuries and continents, humanity has known war, persecution, terrorism, displacement, and division. Nations have been torn apart. Families have fled their homes. Millions have carried wounds long after the fighting stopped. Yet another story has also been unfolding: The story of what violence could not destroy. From ancient conflicts and Christian persecution to the World Wars, Vietnam, September 11, Ukraine, Gaza, and today's crises, Deacon Paul H. Pham searches for moments when ordinary and extraordinary people refused to let hatred determine who they would become. Some chose courage when fear was understandable. Some showed mercy when vengeance seemed justified. Some protected strangers or remained faithful under persecution. Some discovered that forgiveness does not erase the wound-it prevents the wound from owning the future. Drawing from Sacred Scripture, documented history, cultural memory, narrative reflection, and the author's own experience as a refugee fleeing Vietnam, Rising Peace does not romanticize suffering or pretend every conflict ends in reconciliation. Instead, it asks: When violence cannot immediately be stopped, what can keep it from possessing the human heart? For Christians, the answer ultimately leads to Jesus Christ. The peace Christ gives is not passivity. It does not ignore evil or excuse injustice. Christian peace can demand truth, courage, sacrifice, justice, repentance, mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This is not simply a book about war. It is a book about what refuses to die within it. Through vivid storytelling and spiritual reflection, Rising Peace invites readers beyond the battlefield to confront deeply personal questions: Would I go back for the stranger? Could I forgive without forgetting? Could I seek justice without becoming consumed by vengeance? Would I still believe when God seemed silent? Where is peace asking something of me now? Praised by Archbishop Alexander K. Sample and distinguished Catholic theologians, clergy, authors, and pastoral leaders, Rising Peace has been described as a "roadmap to a lived peace" and a "diamond-in-wisdom." This first volume begins a larger journey toward a profound Christian truth: peace is more than the silence of weapons, more than survival, and more than victory. Peace begins when evil no longer gets to decide what the human heart will become. In a world divided by fear, anger, ideology, and war, Rising Peace offers something desperately needed: Not naïve optimism, but hope forged in fire. Tolle, lege-take up and read. And discover how, even in humanity's darkest hours, peace can still rise.