It’s easy to promote world peace, but the more difficult part is achieving that peace.
The key to ending violence in the world is not public policy, but first eliminating any hostility in our own hearts.
In a treatise on Christian Perfection by St Gregory of Nyssa, he relates this necessary part of establishing peace.
He is our peace, who has made both one. Since Christ is our peace, we shall be living up to the name of Christian if we let Christ be seen in our lives by letting peace reign in our hearts. He has brought hostility to an end, as the apostle said. Therefore, we must not allow it to come back to life in us in any way at all but must proclaim clearly that it is dead indeed. God has destroyed it in a wonderful way for our salvation. We must not, then, allow ourselves to give way to anger or bear grudges, for this would endanger our souls. We must not stir up the very thing that is well and truly dead, calling it back to life by our wickedness.
Peace, if it is to last, must be interior before it can become exterior.
The definition of peace is that there should be harmony between two opposed factions. And so, when the civil war in our nature has been brought to an end and we are at peace within ourselves, we may become peace. Then we shall really be true to the name of Christ that we bear.
Peace can start today, but we need to look at ourselves and our own wounded heart first.
And today we celebrate...