Meditation on Peace

Extract

In these days greatly troubled by War, we may well speak of Peace. The word itself almost brings refreshment to our minds when the sky above us has been troubled by the sounds of our country’s preparation for war. I feel we are in one of the most critical periods of the world. For the moment, I presume that God alone, and those in the secrets of God, can see the end.

The kingdoms of the world must go forth to war if they want to spread; if they wish to be world-wide, they prepare quite consistently for world-war; and it might succeed. The great Pax Romana was essentially a peace based on war— the peace that came from the Strong Man Armed.

Peace has so many consoling qualities that it is constantly taken for an end. Peace should never be sought as an end. Disorder always results if we seek as an end what is only an effect.

When Our Blessed Lord sent out His apostles, He was commissioning a thing that was world-wide; not Religion, but the Religion; not just for a race, but for mankind as such; world-wide because it is to be One and Holy. Therefore this Kingdom of Christ offers, at once, Peace, and never the sword. Sometimes the sword has been used in defence of the Church. I do not know whether it was ever a very effective defence of the Church. In the Garden of Olives, Peter very naturally used the sword. It was quite a natural defence.