Why does today’s Gospel say that Jesus doesn’t give peace but division?
Peace is good! Isn’t Jesus all about love and peace? Aren’t Christians called to pray and work for peace? How does this Gospel passage seem so jarringly at odds with that? A passage from the Gospel of John, familiar from the Communion Rite of Mass, says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you” (John 14:27). The second part is essential: the peace of Jesus and the peace of the world are not the same. Jesus causes division precisely because he disrupts the ungodly disorder that the world tries to impose and call peace.
Christians increased from a small population in the Roman Empire to a narrow majority during the fourth century, at the same time as the empire was collapsing. During the fifth century many areas were conquered by Germanic tribal invaders. Christians were blamed by others for weakening the empire which had once been so strong, united and peaceful, and this “Christian undermining of Rome” myth has persisted even to modern times. But even during the chaos of the fifth century, St. Augustine of Hippo pointed out that the Pax Romana had never been a true peace. The Empire had sought to impose order by forcing everyone to serve despotic emperors and false gods and to stop crime and rebellions with their army. This didn’t work any better than it does today. Constraint can defer some conflicts, but it never achieves actual peace.
This is because peace isn’t simply the absence of conflict or tensions. St. Augustine defined it as the tranquility of order. When we direct our love to the highest good, which is to say God, and understand that this includes love of neighbor, we experience peace. If you seek peace, you will never find it, but if you seek God, peace will find you. It is very similar to happiness, which, as Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “is like a butterfly, which, when we pursue it, is always just out of reach, but if we sit still, it may land on us.” Thus, simply surviving the crisis of the moment or getting through a time of stress doesn’t result in peace, but because it flows from rightly ordered love of God, peace can be experienced even in the midst of illness, loss, and daily stresses.
Jesus did not come to bring peace as the world understands it because worldly peace is a counterfeit, a cheap and ineffective imitation. Christians work for peace by dedicating ourselves to the love of God, which repairs the disorder of our world. It causes division in families and societies because it hinders efforts to impose peace by other means. But peace through force or coercion can never be achieved; only with hearts dedicated to God above all else can the gift of true peace be received.
-Fr. Nate
