Letting peace begin... within

The angels who proclaimed the birth of Christ to the shepherds followed
the announcement with this chorus: “Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!” (Lk 2:14).

Or as a popular Christmas hymn renders it:

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet their songs repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

In a world filled with hatred, violence, and warfare, “peace on earth” seems a distant dream. Will it ever become reality?

Historically, Christ was born during the Pax Romana, regarded as a period of relative peace in the Roman Empire that lasted from 27 B.C. until A.D. 180. It wasn’t a true “peace on earth,” however. Under Roman rule was nearly the entire Mediterranean region, including Europe, northern Africa, Asia Minor, and the land of Judea where Christ was born — a far cry from the entire world. Elsewhere, bloody conflicts were waged by Korean kingdoms, Chinese dynasties, and Germanic tribes of northern Europe. Even within the Empire, the Romans conquered Britain in A.D. 87, the Roman-Parthian Wars both predated and outlasted the Pax Romana, and revolts in Judea and other uprisings were summarily extinguished by Rome’s superior military might.

Pax Romana was not a real peace. Nor could it ever be, even if it were to describe a world without war. That’s simply not the kind of peace Christ was born to introduce to the world.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you,” Jesus said. He added: “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

The peace of Christ removes worry and fear — something no worldly peace, no military peace can accomplish. The only real peace on earth we can achieve is a true peace of soul.

“Unless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace,” said then-Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen in the introduction to his book Peace of Soul, written in the aftermath of World War II. “World wars are only projections of the conflicts waged inside the souls of modern men, for nothing happens in the external world that has not first happened within a soul.”

The late Jesuit Father John Hardon, a popular theologian and writer, put it another way.

“External peace is the effect of internal peace,” he wrote in an essay. “Without the one, the other is impossible. There cannot be agreement between people unless there is first tranquility within people.”

Before we can have true peace on earth, we first must have peace of soul. But what is peace of soul, and how do we attain it?

Peace and action

Contrary to some images, interior peace does not imply sitting serenely oblivious to the problems of the world. In fact, it means quite the opposite.

Peace, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “is not merely the absence of war” or a balance of power among adversaries. “Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity. Peace is the ‘tranquility of order.’ Peace is the work of justice and the effect of charity.” (2304)

In his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”), Pope St. John XXIII said that peace “is an order that is founded on truth, built up on justice, nurtured and animated by charity, and brought into effect under the auspices of freedom.” (PT, 167)

This “tranquility of order” refers in large part to the ordering of our passions or emotions. These must always be subordinate to the intellect and will, but our fallen nature has caused our intellect to be darkened and our will to be weakened, thus affecting our ability to discern greater goods from lesser goods or evils. Only with the grace of God can we strengthen our will and intellect so as to subdue our passions and orient them to the good alone.

The good itself is grounded in truth, which brings clarity rather than confusion — and the moral confusion that results when truth is ignored and passions run awry is not compatible with peace of soul.

In other words, if we want interior peace, we must get our priorities straight. That means aligning ourselves more perfectly with the will of God.

That is consistent with what St. Thomas Aquinas taught. Peace, he said, implies a “twofold union”: the directing of our passions or appetites toward a single object, and the uniting of our passions or appetites with those of another. The first union is fulfilled by loving and desiring God with our whole heart, and the second by joining with our neighbors in the pursuit of truth and goodness. Justice clears obstacles to peace, but peace ultimately is the fruit of charity — of our love of God and neighbor.

Where peace begins

If we have peace of soul, and we live it out in charity toward others, then we take a step toward creating a true peace on earth.

And charity, as always, begins in the home, as St. Teresa of Calcutta reminded us.

“If we truly want peace in the world, let us begin by loving one another in our own families,” said Mother Teresa. “If we want to spread joy, we need for every family to have joy.” 

If we do not find peace on earth today, “it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other: that man, that woman, that child is my brother or my sister,” she said on another occasion. “If everyone could see the image of God in his neighbor, do you think we would still need tanks and generals?”

Peace on earth is ultimately linked to our “good will to men,” as the Christmas hymn phrases it. And as another hymn intones, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”

Peace of soul, then, fundamentally means allowing the peace that Christ promises to reign in our hearts. “After all, that is why God came into the world,” Father Hardon once said in a homily. “As the heavenly hosts sang on the day of His birth, God came into the world to bring us peace.

“It is ours if only we are humble and wise enough to pay the cost,” he said. “The cost is surrendering our wills to the will of God.”

GERALD KORSON, editorial consultant for Legatus magazine, is based in Indiana. 

Peace and the Eucharist 

The late author Father John Hardon, S.J., taught that true peace of soul can be found through the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist:

The most powerful means of obtaining peace of heart is from Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. What are we saying? We are saying that in order to obtain that self-mastery which is the precondition of internal peace, we need nothing less than God’s miraculous grace.

Today’s world is so filled with confusion that nothing less than supernatural grace can provide us with the peace of mind without which there can be no peace of heart. Where do we go; to whom do we turn; whom do we ask to give us that peace of mind which is so tragically wanting in the modern world? Who alone can give us that serenity of spirit which is another name for peace of soul? Who, but Jesus Christ who is the Prince of Peace.

We do not normally think of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament as food for the mind and the will but we should. To be at peace, what we first need is to know the truth; what we next need is to do the will of God. On both counts, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is our principal source. 

• Excerpted from a homily published on hardonsj.org 

Achieving peace of soul 

Many Catholic writers have suggested means of attaining peace of soul. One who is lesser known is St. Leonard of Port Maurice, an 18th-century Italian Franciscan friar who was known for his preaching. He suggested four principles for finding and maintaining interior peace:

Be attached to God alone. Wealth, status, material goods, and even relationships have value only in reference to God and the carrying out of His will. If you “can’t take it with you,” then it is of far lesser importance than your relationship with God Himself.

Surrender to divine providence. The seeking and doing of God’s will must be our utmost pursuit. We must humbly embrace God’s will and fully believe God will sustain us with what we need despite any and all adversity.

Welcome suffering and hardship. We tend to avoid pain and difficulties, but Christian perfection requires that we take up our cross daily. When we are rejected or abused by others for our faith, we can rejoice that we are sharing in the suffering of Christ Himself.

Take on only the work that your vocation demands. Even in accepting service to others, there are limits to what we can handle. Prudence, prayer, and perhaps spiritual direction will help us to serve God and neighbor as much as we can without burning ourselves out and losing that interior peace.