Words on Peace

On May 15th, there was a World Peace Conference held in Portland Oregon.  Five recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize came to Portland State University to speak about world peace. Father Bernard attended the conference. Rev. Abbot Joseph Wood, OSB also spoke on the issue and this is an excerpt from his talk.

Peace is often described as freedom from war, or as an absence of hostilities between nations, or freedom from dissension.  This makes peace sound like an experience or state present or not in accordance with extrinsic things. Real peace has more to do with what is going on within an individual person.  In this understanding, peace can be described as the tranquility of order.

I am writing as a Benedictine monk and we have a traditional value of what we call PAX or Peace, with PAX BENEDCITINA.  This is the order and calmness that exists within individual person when they are in tune with both the spiritual and material reality.  It is an experience of inner balance in which personal integrity and the integrity of others is valued and recognized and in which one is in tune with God, humankind, creatures and the world.  It is interesting, early Christian monasticism, the desert monks thought of a perfect symbol of peace - establishing harmony with wild animals that were marauding their gardens.  an Irish monk in Switzerland, St. Gall, established a good relationship with a bear.  This is reminiscent of a famous passage of Isaiah 11: "Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: the calf and the young lion shall browse together."

It seems that St. Benedict's most basic requirement for peace was the tranquility of the order, through the following of the laws of nature: for example, getting enough rest, eating properly, not drinking too much, avoiding extremes, and taking care of those who are sick.  Also in Benedictinism there needs to be a harmony between being, thought, word and action.  Also Benedict insists on silence and orderliness.  This kind of an atmosphere promotes inner peace.  If one wants peace, one must avoid excessive worry, and excessive needs and one must have a certain openness and flexibility, and freedom from envy.  It is good to be basically content with life as one finds it.  This is only possible by an ability to control our desires and possessing and evenness of character and by attempting to achieve unity with God.  But even if one has these desirable factors of development in one's identity, peace on this earth is only partial and fragile.  Only in the next life do we find perfect peace.

But it is not without reason that many people, especially in our modern, busy, noisy world come for visits to monasteries and find an environment where peace can be more easily experienced, felt, worked for, and taken in, in a milieu of silence and beauty.