Being and Making Peace Today

It may be my personality; it may be my mistrust of “righteous causes,” but I’ve never been one to join protest groups or to “work for peace,” as Franciscans are supposed to do. Yet, at the same time, my whole life has been, in one way or another, a search for peace, peace of soul, especially. My protest, if I can use that term, has been an almost daily struggle to become a peaceful person. And I have learned over the years that the search for personal peace means, for a Christian, a search for the face of Christ, the Prince of Peace. As is written in Psalm 105, “Turn to the Lord and his strength; constantly seek his face.”

It is this Christ who says to us in the Mass, “Peace I give you, my peace I give you.” And it is to this Christ that we give answer in the Mass, as we pray, “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.” This liturgical prayer tells me that peace is intimately connected to the Christ who takes away the sins of the world. It is sin that separates us from the peaceful face of Christ. Where there is sin, there is no peace.

Whether we are drawn to be activists or not, we need more than just quietly remaining peaceful people. We need God’s grace of courage in the face of injustice. The face of injustice is not Christ’s face, nor is the way to Christ’s justice confrontation, but rather standing up courageously and letting the face of Christ and its truth shine through us publicly.

I realize that such a stance is very difficult in the United States today because of the lack of civil boundaries in our discourse. As soon as one tries to shine Christ’s light of truth on an unjust situation, your character and/or intelligence are attacked. You are inevitably accused of some heinous crime or flaw in character. So it is important that you see such a circumstance as a graced moment in which you stand your ground and ask Christ to help you proceed with dignity, poise, and grace, continuing to focus the while on the unjust situation itself and not on the character of the one who is arguing the other side by attacking your character and moral convictions by insisting that it is not the situation but you who are unjust and unfair. How hard it is to persevere in the truth in that kind of impasse, and you cannot even begin without praying constantly for Christ and His truth to shine through you, no matter what. And so you stand fast for what is good and true and become thereby a living sign of protest without breaking the bonds of goodness and civility yourself. You become a loud silence instead of a strident, angry noise.

So how does one persevere in the determination to radiate the truth of Christ in good times and bad? The answer St. Francis gives us is what he called “fraternitas,” fraternity. It is only by being bonded with others in fraternal love that we can keep standing up for the ideals and moral clarity it takes to live in the truth. We are all the Mystical Body of Christ, and together we endeavor to let the truth of Christ’s face shine in our lives individually and collectively.  

Who that Body of Christ is differs widely. For us Franciscans it is our fraternity itself that is the tangible body of Christ; for others it may be their parish or synagogue or Temple; for still others, it could be a support group, or an extended family of brothers and sisters who share your values and have become a place of safety and refuge for you. Whatever the tangible group, the important thing is that the group is bonded in the pursuit of the face of God and God’s justice and not some political goal. Granted the political goal may help to focus the ultimate goal, but it is not the ultimate goal itself. The ultimate goal is God’s face, God’s justice and truth.