In all creatures God is revealed to us: the beauty, the grandeur, the infinite variety, the individuality, and the mystery. That is what St. Francis saw and what he teaches us. But something has deformed the beauty of God’s creation, and that something is injustice. According to St. Bonaventure, in his Collationes en Hexaëmeron, “justice makes beautiful what has been deformed.” Justice then is the path to peace, peace of mind, peace between and among people, and peace among all God’s creatures. St. Francis, of course, was not a philosopher, a thinker, and theologian like St. Bonaventure. He was a seer, a poet. He spent his whole life trying to see rather than trying to reason things out. He was always looking for signs of God in the world around him. He had found God in the lepers, so he knew that one must look hard and long in order to see the hidden mystery beneath the appearances of things. And because of his deep presence to things and people, he was also a contemplative, one who looks and looks deeply. And that is the first step toward making peace and reconciliation.
—from the book Surrounded by Love: Seven Teachings from Saint Francis
by Murray Bodo, OFM
1 thought on “Justice Is the Path to Peace”
Dear Father in heaven, we thank you that with our poor, faulty, sinful, and death-ridden lives we may find shelter in your love. We thank you that we are your children. We thank you that whatever we are, however depressed we are about ourselves and the inadequacy of our own nature, we are still your children. Give us your Spirit, we pray. Give us your Holy Spirit, penetrating our whole nature, our flesh and blood, keeping us firm in faith under all temptation and distress. Give us your Spirit to fill us with hope as we look to the future, to fill us with certainty in our Lord Jesus Christ, who was, and is, and is to come, whose victory is before our eyes so that we never waver or become afraid. Give us your Spirit so that we may live in this certainty and prepare ourselves more and more for your coming into the world. May we come to know that your loving-kindness is at work today, that in the end your deliverance will come quickly, to the glory of your name. Amen.