Beloved Holy Spirit, one of Your wonderful gifts is peace. It is a peace that the world cannot give (cf Jn 14:27), but neither can it take. This points to a peace different from the peace we usually know – it is a peace that lasts.
The world talks so much about peace, but cannot find it! There is always war somewhere, and the peace achieved is often fragile. But where is peace to come from? With all good will, one does not reach that dimension of peace of which Jesus speaks.
Peace is not only the absence of the concrete war, important as it is. Peace is more: It is the conformity of life with the truth of being and gets its creative power from there.
In these reflections we come to deeper questions, Holy Spirit, for it is true when it is said that peace must first begin with us!
So where does peace come from?
Brother Klaus, a saint from Switzerland, tells us: “Peace is always in God!”
Peace comes from the relationship with God, when our lives are completely ordered in Him. If we allow You, Holy Spirit, the possibility of clearing out everything that opposes peace in us, then it matures as Your fruit. First of all, it overcomes the inner war within us that comes from disordered passions, the war against our reason, by doing what we actually know that we should not do. The Spirit also works on our wrong attitudes: self-concentration, pride and much more. He opens our eyes to the whole perspective and lets our own ego take a back seat to the greater good.
But what applies to us also applies to the world. If we do not close our eyes, we see so many areas of the world in conflict, so much violence, which is not always visible, but still terribly present!
How, for example, is true peace to come when the lives of innocent children in the mother’s womb are not respected but destroyed?
How can peace come when people do not know the source of peace?
How can peace come when the truth is not recognized and respected?
So, Holy Spirit, I see only one way to find true and deeper peace: We must get to know You more deeply, the source of peace, and become capable of being peacemakers in You.
And we should tell other people about You, tell in Your light about the goodness of our Heavenly Father. True peace would come when they got to know the Father of all people properly, as He really is. Who then, if he does not close his heart, could still wage war against his fellow human beings?
