Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [181]
For no earthly power can shatter his peace who, like the merchant in the Gospel who gave away everything he had for one costly pearl, no longer seeks anything but Christ. He knows “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).
This peace is a thing immeasurably precious in itself, and most pleasing to the eyes of God; it is the special gift of the Paraclete whom Christ has promised us before His leavetaking: “My peace I give unto you” (John 14:27).
Inner peace engenders outward concord
This inward peace, then, is infinitely more important even than all outward concord; however, it is not separable from the latter, but engenders it of necessity. If inward peace reigns in a man’s soul—as it does in the saints’—it removes from any struggle he may have to wage the venoms of asperity and irritation, of harshness and malicious enmity. With him, the struggle for the kingdom of God becomes visibly and tangibly a struggle of Peace against Peacelessness.
Such a fight is always waged in the ultimate interest of the opponent, too—according to the words of St. Augustine: “To kill the error, to love the erring one.”
It is a fight waged with weapons entirely different from those wielded by the adversary—with the weapons of Light. Such a struggle is inscribed with the words of the Lord: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). For they who possess true inward peace irradiate peace even when fighting for the kingdom of God. From their being emanates an intrinsic harmony, the reflection of the infinite harmony of God; from their whole bearing and doing issues a mild and soothing light, which melts away all grimness and embitterment.
A true warrior of Christ is firmly entrenched in the Absolute. He conducts his actions sovereignly from an irremovable point of vantage, against which all the poisoned arrows sent by his adversaries prove powerless.
Such a style of warfare tends to disarm the antagonist and to communicate to him something of the serene calm that tints it; even to draw him irresistibly into the orbit of that victorious yet mild and redeeming light.
We must also be peacemakers
But there is one more thing we must remember. The Lord says, not merely, “Blessed are they who are at peace,” but, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” It does not suffice to love peace and to preserve it amidst inevitable conflicts; beyond that, a true Christian must also and everywhere act as a peacemaker. Wherever we witness a struggle over earthly goods or a struggle for the kingdom of God that takes the form of a mundane strife, we should be pained and grieved at the sight.
We should diligently try, in the first case, to mediate peace, and in the second, to inject the spirit of peace into the inevitable struggle for the kingdom of God and to restore that struggle to its true character. In this function of peacemakers, too, it will be most needful for us to possess true inward peace in ourselves, and that in a measure which renders it effective even by mere spontaneous irradiation.
All saints were peacemakers and brought peace wherever they went. A scene from St. Francis’ life may provide the most touching illustration for this. Shortly before his death the saint was lying, gravely ill, in the episcopal palace at Assisi.
“The first thing Francis learned there, after his arrival, about the affairs of his native town” (we quote from Jörgensen’s St. Francis of Assisi) “was that an open feud had broken out between the Podestà and the Bishop. The Bishop had pronounced an interdict against the Podestà; the latter, in his turn, had forbidden the burghers all traffic with their spiritual head. ‘It should greatly shame us,’ said Francis to his brethren, ‘that none