Where Do We Find Our Peace?

We live in a world that lacks peace. Certainly, there are wars and conflicts happening across the globe, but here is also a lack of peace within governments, in our society, in neighborhoods, and in families. As a matter of fact, it seems that whenever people gather together, hostility and division reign. All of this results in less and less peace found in human hearts.
 
The Catholic Church has clearly taught that peace is not simply the absence of war. The Church turns to St. Augustine, who wrote that peace is “the tranquility of order” (De civ Dei 19, 13, 1: PL 41, 640). When we speak of the tranquility of order, we might say it can also be thought of as the making right of people’s relationships with God, first, and then with one another. We can also see that when this right ordering must happen within a person’s heart with God, and then it can more easily happen among persons. The right ordering of human hearts promotes the tranquility of order in families, in marriages, in communities, among nations, and within the global community of nations. If this tranquility of order occurs on the societal and national levels, then the tranquility of order within human hearts will be promoted. However, it must be seen that the first and necessary right ordering is between the individual’s heart and God.
 
What is the sense of this tranquility of order? The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “Earthly peace is the image and the fruit of the peace of Christ, the messianic ‘Prince of Peace.’ By the blood of his Cross, ‘in his own person he killed the hostility,’ he reconciled men with God and made his Church the sacrament of the unity of the human race and of its union with God” (CCC, #2305). What this means for us practically in our daily lives is that we must go to Jesus, Our Savior, and ask Him for peace.
 
Our Lord Himself spoke to His disciples and, therefore, to us in St. John’s Gospel words that are very familiar. “Peace I leave you; my peace I give you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14:27). The beginning of this phrase forms part of the prayer offered at Mass after the Our Father. We should take Jesus at His word and go to Him begging for peace. We should go to Mass as often as possible, even daily, and ask Our Lord, who becomes present in the Blessed Sacrament, to give us and the whole world the peace from His Heart, Not the uneasy, fragile peace the world offers does the One who died on the Cross offer. He gives us true and abiding peace. We should go to Our Lord waiting for us in the tabernacles of our churches or exposed on our altars and ask Him to grant us His peace. We should follow the request made by many popes, most recently by Pope Leo XIV, to take up the rosary daily asking for Our Lady’s intercession for the [peace that comes to us from her Son.] Because our prayer opens our hearts to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, our petitions for peace are powerful. Let us ask Jesus for peace throughout the world and in our own communities, our families and our hearts.
 
Dear friends, if we want peace outside of ourselves, we must seek peace within our own hearts. Let us not be afraid!  Let us ask the Prince of Peace for His peace in all our relationships and for His peace for the whole world.
 
Most Reverend William J. Waltersheid
Auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh