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Those who sense the disharmony of the world are closer to God

By comparison with them who have peace in this sense, those who sense—and suffer from—the disharmony inherent in a world severed from God are by one degree nearer to the truth and thus to God Himself. Those who are searching restlessly and ceaselessly for true happiness; who are disappointed by every earthly pleasure or possession which would masquerade as an absolute; who are disturbed by the idea of death; who feel secure neither in themselves nor in the world; who face the future with anxiety, and are deprived of peace by their worry about whatever they love—they at least experience the insufficiency of a world grounded upon itself alone.

Just because they vaguely feel, without correctly interpreting it, the disharmony implied in their separation from God, they are no longer so widely separated from God as are those entrenched in a false peace.

Those who consciously suffer from estrangement from God are closer yet to Him

Even closer to Truth are such as, while equally lacking peace, consciously and explicitly trace their want of peace to their disunity with God. Such are those who are not without belief in God, yet keep on doubting; who hear the call of God but are reluctant to part with illicit joys; who are dragged to and fro between God and the world; who, held by the spells of sin, would yet wriggle themselves free; who, were it but possible, would fain serve two masters.

These are the souls that most deeply experience disharmony, are most restless, and are most tormented by their knowing no inward peace.

The objective fact of their disunity with God is unquestionably a terrible evil, but the fact that it impinges upon their minds in the form of distress and anguish—robbing them of peace—is highly valuable, for it forces them into an awareness of Truth by one degree less indirect than is present in those who merely suffer from the immanent disharmony of the world without viewing it explicitly in terms of a disjunction from God.

They at any rate surmise the bliss that lies in a union with God; they recognize the seat of true peace and the central cause of their want of peace. They have taken profit from their trouble to the point of laying bare its real root. They have advanced as far as to evince an express yearning for God, though they still feebly evade a clear and unequivocal decision for God. Of such a kind was the tribulation St. Augustine suffered before his conversion, the unrest of which he was to give so moving and magnificent an account in his Confessions.

Inner peace comes only to him who attains full reconciliation with God

Inward discord, as we now see, is not an absolute evil but an adequate response to the world taken in separation from God; it cannot and must not be overcome except by man’s awakening to the Truth and his adequate response to the fact that beyond and above all the disharmony of the world, God the infinitely Glorious and Blissful One, who is Love, is enthroned. It will disappear when man becomes aware of his metaphysical situation, particularly as modified by Christ’s redemption of the world.

The nagging unrest of him who doubts and of him who writhes in the fetters of sin, the most deeply painful experience of unrest will dissolve as soon as he achieves an unequivocal surrender to God: peace will come to man when he lets himself fall into the arms of God and—submitting to the grace that makes him into a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, whose sins are washed away by the Blood of the Lamb—attains to a reconciliation with God.

Every one of us feels something of this same unrest, whenever he is aware of deviating from the paths which God has proposed to us; whenever his conscience warns him of a separation from God. No sooner do we turn back and renounce what has been separating us from God than our unrest commences to dissolve; but until we have repented of our wrong and been forgiven by God, our peace will not be completely restored.

Inner peace requires a