Christ's peace is reflected in acts of love, reconciliation

Friday, Apr. 24, 2020

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The peace that is Christ’s gift to individuals and to humanity as a whole is not some superficial sense of calm, but an active force of reconciliation that calls for cooperation and self-giving, Pope Francis said.

The peace Christ offers “comes from his cross” and is “incarnated in an infinite host of saints, who are inventive, creative and always devise new ways to love,” Pope Francis said April 15 during the livestreamed version of his weekly general audience.

Continuing his series of audience talks about the Eight Beatitudes from Matthew 5:3-12, Pope Francis said he was pleased during Easter week to have reached the seventh beatitude: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

The peace of Christ,” he said, “is the fruit of his death and resurrection.”

What Christ promises is not simply a sense of calm, which can indicate a “domesticated conscience,” the pope said. And, in fact, “spiritual growth often occurs precisely when our tranquility has somehow been disturbed.

Many times, it is the Lord himself who sows agitation in us so we would turn to him,” the pope said.

And, in the context of war, he said, most people would understand peace as being the result either of one side conquering another or of both sides giving up something in order to make a peace treaty.

“We cannot but hope and pray that they always choose this second path,” the pope said, “but we also must take into consideration that history is an infinite series of peace treaties violated by later wars or by the metamorphosis of those same wars in other ways or places.”