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Peace on Earth?

By James Tillman

December 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – ‘Tis the season for platitudes.

To some it seems the season for platitudes by necessity.  When private individuals, public figures, and companies wish to be as inoffensive as possible, they search for the vaguest possible terms.  And so we hear that it is the season of goodwill, of brotherhood, or of peace - words that, taken out of any religious context, mean merely what the hearer wants them to mean. 

For a Christian to search for common ground among such statements is like a Christian searching for common ground with a secular humanist in the saying of Saint Augustine: "Love and do what you will."  Each might agree that this statement is true, but because each has a rather different idea of what that love might be, such agreement is certainly empty and probably harmful.  And so it is that when I hear men call for peace on earth this Christmas, I am inclined to disagree.

Men now associate peace with the absence of conflict; it is seen as a state in which men ‘respect’ the opinions of others sufficiently to let them go their own way.  If this is peace, however, then the first Christmas was anything but peaceful: the first Christmas was precisely God's refusal to let man follow his own way.  The Jews did not want their Savior's way; they wanted a savior who would free them politically.  The pagans did not want their Savior's way; even the best of them could hardly have understood His message, with its glorification of the humble.  The world did not want to change its way; without Our Lord it would have continued the long and easy slide into ennui and despair.  The truth is that God did not merely give the first Christmas gift; he also gave the first vehemently unwelcomed and quite unexpected Christmas gift.

So, in terms of the popular conception of peace, Christmas is a violent rather than a peaceful event.  God seized the path of the world and changed it; he wrenched the planet backwards against the orbit it had followed since the Fall of Man, and the earthquakes from the cataclysm yet trouble the world.

For as Our Lord cast a fire upon the earth, that fire still burns; as He never made peace with the world, so also His followers have never made peace.  Our Lord brings not bring peace but a sword; not peace but division; not external harmony but, as He Himself said, father set against son and mother against daughter.  For while the Prince of Darkness is Lord of the World; and while he attempts to twist men to his will in the halls of Congress, in the boardrooms of companies, in the classrooms in schools, and most of all in the recesses of our own souls; and while men act against God and against His nature - so long must all good men continue to fight "against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places." And while Satan wages his war, so we must wage ours through prayer, sacrifice, and action by every means at our disposal - either wage war, or surrender.  Peace? It is far better to hope for war.

What, then, of the choirs of angels singing peace?

The force of God's action in the Incarnation was exceeded only by its invisibility.  It is as if dynamite had exploded as softly and gently as the falling of snow.  And as God's glory was masked and invisible to the physical eye on Christmas, so also the peace Our Lord brought on Christmas remains invisible, hidden within the heart of reality.

As St. Thomas Aquinas says, peace is a harmony between the desires of the individual, causing these desires not to clash against each other and thereby preventing us from striving against ourselves.  True peace is thus an act springing from the love of God - for one only has peace when one's desires are ordered to Him: until we have this internal peace our own members wage war against each other. 

Peace cannot be known by the wicked. Their desires roam over creation searching desperately for an end that can satisfy their constant hunger and itching for more, when only the one, infinite God can put to rest man's infinite desire.  Thus it is that the angels sing "peace to men of goodwill."  It is not that God will not give peace to wicked men; it is that a wicked man cannot receive peace, for a wicked man's desires cannot be in harmony.  But for those who have conquered themselves and subordinated every thought and movement to Christ, even in the midst of external strife, God gives a peace that surpasses understanding and that cannot be removed by any worldly trouble.  Our Lord tells us that, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

This is why one must disagree with those who wish peace upon the Earth for Christmas.  God did not come to bring external peace; for such peace cannot be had until all is renewed and the reign of God is extended across the world.  Nor should we work solely for such external peace and agreement, for to reach solely for such a peace is to abandon others in internal turmoil for the sake of a superficial harmony.  Yes, God offers his peace to each individual, as He offered it to the world on Christmas - but His peace demands unceasing battle so long as we live, until we are called home to His heavenly kingdom.

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