Peace

Benedictine peace comes from being one with creation, from being in harmony with the universe, from rising above ourselves to the peace of Christ, which the world definitely does not give and which confounds the understanding of people who have been led to believe that peace is the absence of conflict or control by force. Benedictine peace comes from trying over and over again to find our place in the universe without violence, without selfishness, without demands.

Benedictine peace is not something that is ever achieved. It is something sincerely and consistently sought. It comes, in fact, from the seeking, not the getting. It comes from the inside, not the outside. It comes from right-heartedness, not from self-centeredness. It comes from the way we look at life, not from the way we control it. It comes from the attitudes we bring to things, not from the power we bring to them. Peace is the fruit of Benedictine spirituality.

The Rule is very clear about what it takes to live in peace. Peaces comes from not needing to control everything and not needing to have everything and not needing to surpass everyone and not needing to know everything and not needing to have everyone else be like me. Peace comes from seeking God in the present and seeing the world as a whole.

Peace, the Rule says comes from not allowing any part of us to consume all the rest of us. When fear of failure haunts us, peace is not possible. When fear of the other erodes our ability to trust, peace is not possible. When life is always lived at high speed, peace is not possible. When what we have means more to us than what we are, peace is not possible. When consumption is more important to us than contemplation, peace is not possible. When idleness is more our vision of the good life than creative productivity, then peace is not possible. When profit means more to us than quality of life, peace is not possible. When these things fray our nerves and waste our days and disturb our nights, then our souls have dried and frozen.

The Rule shows us that peace comes when we end the war within ourselves. But war within ourselves is always a prelude to war outside ourselves. All war starts within our own hearts. When our egos are inflated or our desires insatiable, we go to war with the other for the sad joy of maintaining our one-dimensional worlds. The Rule of St. Benedict offers a model of peace that depends on being gentle with ourselves, with the other and gentle with the earth. It is a vision of nonviolence in a world for which violence is the air it breathes, the song it sings, the heroes it worships the business it does. RB Prologue

excerpted from Wisdom Distilled from the Daily
by Joan Chittister, OSB
Harper San Francisco 1990