Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [178]
How could we, amidst the turmoil of such a life, develop the habit of confronting everything with God and of thus subjecting all our single preoccupations to an intrinsic order? How could we dwell in the depths of reality and the realm of eternal values; how find ourselves?
On the contrary, pushed about and unduly possessed by our rapidly alternating tasks (all of which carry in them the impetus of urgency), we are at the mercy of the autonomous mechanism of each in turn. In our constant attention to present and fugitive actuality, even should the matter in hand be ever so profound and important in itself, we are hopelessly incapable of setting ourselves, in conspectu Dei, at a distance from all things, including our own ego.
Yet, this distance, as has been shown, forms an indispensable prerequisite for the neutralization of any kind of depression and excitement.
Even aside from this, a hyperactive and one-sidedly pragmatic rhythm of life—in which contemplation is doomed to wither—involves as such, in a general sense, a certain formal lack of peace. The restlessness, the speed, the nervous fatigue inherent in such a mode of life, the feverish rhythm of work and the bondage to the imperative of doing that are inseparable from it, inevitably plunge man into a state of peacelessness.
This is not the peacelessness of disharmony or of a subverted equilibrium (which is the note, for instance, of jealousy), but at any rate the peacelessness of a peripheral, centrifugal mode of being, of an endless rushing and routing. It, too, forms an antithesis to positive peace. Such bundles of energy, bursting with dynamism and delivered up entirely to the concern of the moment, who can never allow themselves a spell of emerging from the immanent logic of their activities, essentially carry with them a suggestion of peacelessness. Not for them is the state of habitare secum. True peace, then, is inseparable from recollection.
Composure is not the same as recollection
Composure of mind, of course, seems to be possible without true peace. There are people who manage their affairs slowly and comfortably, without any hustle and bustle at all, and who nevertheless cannot be described as being truly and inwardly at peace. But such people, though the slow cadence of their vital manifestation creates an impression of calmness and composure, are too indifferent, empty, or irrelevant to be really recollected.
What matters in this regard is not the quick or slow cadence of one’s reactions, nor the tense or relaxed quality of one’s vital rhythm. It is, rather, the presence or absence of concentration and contemplation; one’s tendency towards the depths or the periphery; whether one’s attitude of mind tends to be reflective or dissipated; whether one lives in a mode of unity and continuity, or as a puppet actuated, from moment to moment, by the heterogeneous flux of events, impressions, and aims—a slave of imperious automatism. Such automatism may be seen, too, when we engage too readily in a great variety of work, though all the activities we embark upon be in themselves legitimate.
Inner peace calls us to have our spiritual roots in God
The true actual peace of the soul depends, finally, on that superactual, habitual, constant attention to God, that sustained consciousness of having our roots in God, which allows our interior world to be penetrated by a ray of His infinite peace. This conveys to us a foretaste of ultimate harmony and protects us against inward disunity and unrest.
It is implied in this true peace that we shall never be wholly submerged by the vortex of successive tensions which we have to endure. We shall never so forget the true and perennial order of things as to overestimate the task of the moment merely because we are caught in the tension of our effort to realize it.
Lack of inner peace renders happiness impossible
Lack of peace constitutes a threefold evil. First, if experienced as such, it is essentially inconsistent