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The first and most obvious mark of inward peace, then, is a formal unity of our essential direction of life; an absence of different basic directions at loggerheads with one another; a liberation from unrest and incessant searching; the integral ordination of our interests and pursuits to an ultimate life-purpose.

But this formal unity—this inner coordination and convergency—is not all that inward peace implies. It also implies a unity with the good; a participation in the harmony implicit in the good as such. No matter how integrally (in a purely formal sense) we give our attention to what gratifies our pride and our concupiscence—without ever flinching from this our course; without being haunted by any pangs of conscience—we still live in a state of disharmony and can never taste true peace, which emanates from the intimate beauty of values.

All attitudes opposed to value carry in them a germ of discord, a principle destructive of community. In values alone dwells a virtus unitiva. They alone, therefore, can fill us with true concord and harmony, which is a positive state of the soul, implying fat more than a mere absence of instability or inward division.

Clearly, nothing could be more unlike true peace in its quality than the state of mind characteristic of high pride. The proud man, self-contained and seemingly free from all inner contradiction as he may be, through his fierce contempt for objective values inevitably becomes tainted with the disharmony attached to all negation of the good.

Inner peace also requires a personal relation with God

Yet, even our participation in the good does not by itself give us what may most properly be called inward peace; for the latter requires our incorporation, not only in the realm of values and their harmony, but in the living God, in the holiness of the Almighty Lord, who is the Good per se and who reveals Himself in Christ.

Inward peace, at its highest, means even more than our participation in the light of values, our reception of the tranquillity and simplicity conveyed by their power, our being integrally permeated with the tone of their accord and harmony. It means, beyond that, that clarity and limpidity of the soul which nothing except a real link, a personal communion, with the thrice Holy One can accomplish in the soul; that enlightening of which the Prophet Isaiah says: “Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee” (Isa. 60:1).

To sum up—true peace, the peace Christ means when He says, “My peace I give unto you,” includes three main aspects.

First, a more formal one: a state of inner concord and unity takes the place of strife and division among conflicting orientations, of indecision concerning the ultimate directions of life. By contrast to an unappeasable disquietude—a fidgety groping for what might prove to be the real thing and the secret of true happiness—there is the valid recognition and enduring possession of the aim that makes life worth living; the state of resting in an ultimate which gives to everything else its meaning and renders all further search unnecessary. It is the attitude which fills the soul of Simeon when he exclaims: “Now Thou dost dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy word in peace; because my eyes have seen Thy salvation” (Luke 2:29-30).

True peace may only be established on the highest good

The second main aspect of true peace refers to its objective foundation, The good in which we repose must be of a nature to justify this attitude of ours, It must in truth be the highest good; a good that, once found, really does render all further quest superfluous and inappropriate. This principle of objectivity—a general presupposition, strictly speaking, of all valuable attitudes in man—is what prints upon true peace the seal of validity and sets it apart from all kinds of illusory peace based on this or that deception. And the highest good, which alone can validate our peace, is also the only one that can satisfy us completely.

True peace