As the old saying goes, sometimes we can miss the forest for the trees.
It’s like the old story of a king who lived in a kingdom plagued by thievery. And the thieves weren’t just thieving, they were also smuggling what they stole out of the country. So the king decided to post guards at all the border crossings leading out of the country with orders to search everybody and everything that came through.
At one checkpoint, the guards noticed a boy who came through every day pulling a wagon. Each day the boy had a different load in his wagon. One day it was sticks. The next, rocks. The next, dirt, and so on. The guards dutifully searched the boy and his wagon each time he came through and never found anything that was stolen.
But the boy was stealing … wagons!
Missing the point
This story came to mind a while back when I suddenly discovered I’d missed the mark when came to the meaning of the peace of Christ. Just like the guards in the story, I’d totally and completely missed it, even though it was right in front of me the whole time.
The problem came from the fact that there are two kinds of peace: worldly peace and spiritual peace. Worldly peace comes in two forms. The first is a broad, overarching peace that specifically involves the lack of war. This type of peace is at best an uneasy peace that never lasts long on those rare occasions when it actually occurs. The second form of worldly peace is personal in nature and tends to run along the lines of domestic tranquility, getting along with our families, our coworkers, our neighbors and the like. It’s most often closely associated with the word “quiet,” especially for those who are parents. And it’s just as fleeting as the other.
My understanding of peace was completely fixated on worldly peace. It was the load I kept searching through in the wagon each day, and it was completely concealing the meaning of spiritual peace – the peace of Christ – that was right there in front of me.
Verses like Matthew 10:34 – where Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” – didn’t help. In that case Jesus was talking about worldly peace and warning His followers that they won’t get much of it if they choose to follow Him.
But it suddenly became clear one day as I was reflecting on John 14:27, when Jesus tells His disciples, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.
Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” I had completely missed the point that Christ was talking about a different kind of peace – a spiritual peace grounded in faith in Him.
This is the peace St. Paul refers to in Philippians 4:7 when he says, ”And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
Active, not quiet peace
Archbishop Fulton Sheen explains it this way. He says the peace of Christ isn’t the peace and quiet of worldly peace, but is rather an active, vibrant inner peace that comes from our relationship with Jesus Christ. In other words, it is a lived faith, a faith lived in action in the trenches of the spiritual combat we face in every aspect of life.
Archbishop Sheen gives us Job as the perfect example of the peace of Christ. Job was a man who had everything a person could possibly ask for – family, wealth, good health and complete faith in God. Through no fault of his own, he suddenly loses everything – family, wealth, even his health. Everything except for his faith in God. And through his sufferings, Job never wavered in that faith.
Job clearly lives in action this peace of Christ, which does very clearly pass all our human understanding. It is the peace that guards our hearts and minds in Christ. It is the peace that assures us that no matter what comes our way or happens to us, even if it kills us, everything will be all right because of our faith in Christ.
Deacon William S. Melton Jr. serves at St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Gastonia.