peace: a gift, and a choice

"Real and right and true will turn into

secret peace in inside the heart of you, 

sweet, secret peace..."

-Neil Finn, Sweet Secret Peace

Peace. It's a funny thing. No, I'm not talking about that "world peace" everyone wants - I'm talking about that deep, true, assured calm within, that comes from what is "real, right, and true." Peace is more than just saying "everything will be OK."

Peace seems like such a hard thing to find, and an even harder thing to keep... particularly in a world that moves so fast, and which is also so broken. Think about all the broken things we carry around in our lives, in particular, the broken relationships. I'm sure we all have at least one - and if you don't, you're very, very fortunate - that would be an incredible blessing.

Ultimately, peace is a gift from God (who is real, right, and true!), but it is a gift we must choose to accept. I really believe this, particularly when I think about the way my days go, and the things that can perturb it. When something comes along to rattle me, and I don't pause for a moment to consider it, I lose that state of peace and get frustrated, or impatient, or generally upset and caught up in all that brokenness. If I think about it, if I am mindful of the challenge being presented to me, I can choose the accept the path of peace instead. It's part of the reason I end my blog posts with the (traditionally Franciscan) words "peace, and all good" - a reminder of the path I should choose, although I so often do not.

Have you ever read the book The Gift Of Peace? It's a beautiful book, written by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin as he was dying of pancreatic cancer. In the last chapter, he says:

"What I would like to leave behind is a simple prayer that each of you may find what I have found - God's special gift to us all: the gift of peace. When we are at peace, we find the freedom to be most fully who we are, even in the worst of times."

What truth. When we are at peace, we find the freedom to be most fully who we are, even in the worst of times. Cardinal Bernardin chose to accept the gift of peace. May we do so, as well. He ended his book with the Prayer of St. Francis, and so I will end this post with it:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

+peace, and all good.