As more than one wise person has insisted, peace is about more than the absence of war or conflict. True peace is, among other things, inseparable from unity, that fruit of self-forgetting love. Living life detached and separated from one another may obviate conflict and engender a pseudo-peace, but this is usually little more than mutual toleration or plain indifference. Thus, Saint Paul exhorts us to strive to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. As such, peace and unity validate each other: Without unity, there can be no real peace, and without peace, no true unity. The path to both is simple but difficult. In the words of Paul, it calls for living our lives with all humility gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another through love. A tall order, perhaps, any yet nothing more than taking seriously our central vow, conversatio morum within this School of Charity that is our Cistercian life.
Peggy Anderson says
Very thankful, Fr. Joseph, for your words on Peace and Unity. Try as I may, sitting in silence does not on it’s own bring me to the deeper Peace that we all seek. And, just acknowledging my interconnection with all of God’s creation, does not on it’s own, bring me to Unity with all.
However, without these first steps of silence and acknowledging my interconnection with all, I have a very shaky base from which to grow and change. As you say, “simple but difficult.”