“Peace I bequeath to you,
my own peace I give you,
a peace which the world cannot give, this is my gift to you.”
(John 14:27)
my own peace I give you,
a peace which the world cannot give, this is my gift to you.”
(John 14:27)
Above all else, it is peace that I consciously value. Anything damaging it, disturbing it, or distracting me from it, attempts far more than merely interrupting a peaceful existence: it tears at something deep within me, for that is where peace lies.
An external hush and the absence of conflict, so often mistaken for real peace, are clearly gentle, quiet, and calming: they contribute to unstressed living and a peaceful world, but that in itself is only a good start-point for finding the depths of true peace. It cannot be found in anything the world has to offer because it is not of this world: it is ‘a peace which the world cannot give’.
The Benedictine monks and nuns who have been on the fringes of my life for as long as I can remember, have ‘Pax’, peace, as their motto, and this has become increasingly meaningful to me with the passage of time. We are all particularly susceptible to the influence of whatever has been present during our formative years, and my own increasing awareness of this has revealed that I have been privileged to have such a long-term presence acting as a background guide throughout my life; but I have also become aware that I have had privileged access to only one facet of the truth.
What brought this home to me more than anything else was my first brief but real contact with another order, the Order of Preachers – The Dominicans. Their most frequently quoted motto is ‘Veritas’, Truth, and it was the impact of that word that first made me fully aware of my frighteningly narrow understanding of my faith, my sense of direction, my fellow Christians, and of what Jesus had done for me in living and dying as a man upon this earth. Everything that drags me down, tempts me and halts my hesitant progress towards real fulfilment was experienced and understood by Jesus himself; He has experienced everything that rises and falls, that surges and breaks in pieces in my life: He knows everything of the ebb and flow that goes on within me. This is all part of my own truth, and nobody can really know me without knowing everything about me, good and bad. Jesus does know me, through and through.
An external hush and the absence of conflict, so often mistaken for real peace, are clearly gentle, quiet, and calming: they contribute to unstressed living and a peaceful world, but that in itself is only a good start-point for finding the depths of true peace. It cannot be found in anything the world has to offer because it is not of this world: it is ‘a peace which the world cannot give’.
The Benedictine monks and nuns who have been on the fringes of my life for as long as I can remember, have ‘Pax’, peace, as their motto, and this has become increasingly meaningful to me with the passage of time. We are all particularly susceptible to the influence of whatever has been present during our formative years, and my own increasing awareness of this has revealed that I have been privileged to have such a long-term presence acting as a background guide throughout my life; but I have also become aware that I have had privileged access to only one facet of the truth.
What brought this home to me more than anything else was my first brief but real contact with another order, the Order of Preachers – The Dominicans. Their most frequently quoted motto is ‘Veritas’, Truth, and it was the impact of that word that first made me fully aware of my frighteningly narrow understanding of my faith, my sense of direction, my fellow Christians, and of what Jesus had done for me in living and dying as a man upon this earth. Everything that drags me down, tempts me and halts my hesitant progress towards real fulfilment was experienced and understood by Jesus himself; He has experienced everything that rises and falls, that surges and breaks in pieces in my life: He knows everything of the ebb and flow that goes on within me. This is all part of my own truth, and nobody can really know me without knowing everything about me, good and bad. Jesus does know me, through and through.
The peace that shadowed my childhood at Stanbrook, and formed a hushed background to my teenage years at Douai, drew me further into a quiet contentment with my own company. I began to withdraw too far from the people around me and from the supportive and edifying presence of my fellow Christians, until that word, ‘Veritas’, suddenly thinned my easy comfort by loudly proclaiming that my peace was nothing if not built upon truth. And (as with peace) the truth as the world normally understands it, even when ‘whole’ and ‘nothing but’, is only an outer cover of honesty that enables us to recognize and enter into the deeper reality and significance of truth.
“... when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth, ...”
(John 16:13)
Both the peace of Christ and the truth of the Holy Spirit must make their home deep within us.
In chapters 13 to 17 of John’s gospel, during the Last Supper, Jesus presents us with a trinity of feeling, of experience, and of expression that parallels The Holy Trinity itself. He commands the apostles, and us, to love one another and pass on the Father’s love to each other just as He has personified it and passed it on to us. “I have loved you just as the Father has loved me.”(15:9)
With the peace of the Son and the truth of the Spirit combining within us and manifesting themselves as the love of the Father towards each one of us, we can become living expressions of the unity which is God Himself. How else shall the Christian Church be returned to the loving harmony for which Jesus created it, and to the clear expression of that togetherness which will lead the world to regard Christianity as synonymous with unity ?
Just as the peaceful example of the Benedictines in my life has played its part in leading me close to Christ, so the deep-rooted truth behind the vocation of the Dominicans will have done the same for those with longer associations with them.
Though written with reference to preachers, the following speaks well of the transforming effect we can all have on others if we allow God to take possession of our innermost being. We will never abandon ourselves to His will if we always linger at the very edge, clinging to some part of ourselves that we believe to be essential to our knowledge of who we are. We must place our whole being in His hands if we are to find the reality of our calling.
‘We religious ... in our corporeality, can make Christ present in our way. The preacher brings the Word to expression, not just in his or her words, but in all that we are. God’s compassion seeks to become flesh and blood in us, in our tenderness, even in our faces.
In the Old Testament, we often find the prayer that God’s face may shine upon us. This prayer was finally answered in the form of a human face, Christ’s face. He looks at the rich young man, loves him and asks him to follow him; he looks at Peter in the courtyard after his betrayal; he looks at Mary Magdalene in the garden and calls her by her name. As preachers, flesh and blood, we can give body to that compassionate look of God. Our bodiliness is not excluded from our vocation.’ (Sing a New Song. Timothy Radcliffe OP)
In chapters 13 to 17 of John’s gospel, during the Last Supper, Jesus presents us with a trinity of feeling, of experience, and of expression that parallels The Holy Trinity itself. He commands the apostles, and us, to love one another and pass on the Father’s love to each other just as He has personified it and passed it on to us. “I have loved you just as the Father has loved me.”(15:9)
With the peace of the Son and the truth of the Spirit combining within us and manifesting themselves as the love of the Father towards each one of us, we can become living expressions of the unity which is God Himself. How else shall the Christian Church be returned to the loving harmony for which Jesus created it, and to the clear expression of that togetherness which will lead the world to regard Christianity as synonymous with unity ?
Just as the peaceful example of the Benedictines in my life has played its part in leading me close to Christ, so the deep-rooted truth behind the vocation of the Dominicans will have done the same for those with longer associations with them.
Though written with reference to preachers, the following speaks well of the transforming effect we can all have on others if we allow God to take possession of our innermost being. We will never abandon ourselves to His will if we always linger at the very edge, clinging to some part of ourselves that we believe to be essential to our knowledge of who we are. We must place our whole being in His hands if we are to find the reality of our calling.
‘We religious ... in our corporeality, can make Christ present in our way. The preacher brings the Word to expression, not just in his or her words, but in all that we are. God’s compassion seeks to become flesh and blood in us, in our tenderness, even in our faces.
In the Old Testament, we often find the prayer that God’s face may shine upon us. This prayer was finally answered in the form of a human face, Christ’s face. He looks at the rich young man, loves him and asks him to follow him; he looks at Peter in the courtyard after his betrayal; he looks at Mary Magdalene in the garden and calls her by her name. As preachers, flesh and blood, we can give body to that compassionate look of God. Our bodiliness is not excluded from our vocation.’ (Sing a New Song. Timothy Radcliffe OP)
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