Holy peace - August 28

Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 20, 21:1-7(8-14); PM Psalm 110:1-5(6-7), 116, 117
1 Kings 7:51-8:21; Acts 28:17-31; Mark 14:43-52

Sometimes when there is much heaviness going on, it is helpful for me to gain perspective. I feel called to look back. Way back. About 1,600 years. To Saint Augustine of Hippo, who died on this day in 430 CE. He was born in north Africa, near a port city upon the Mediterranean Sea, in modern day Algeria in 354 CE. He was a student of philosophy, taught rhetoric, and traveled to Italy to expand his horizons and make his fortune. Augustine was a prolific writer and perpetual learner; he sought to understand God through various religions and contemplative processes. Manicheeism. Neo-Platonism. His mother Monnica was a person of deep Christian faith and had raised him in the Church; it took Augustine a while to come around. Around the age of 30, he had a divine reckoning, realizing how vast the gap was between the reality of his indulgent life and the glory of what life could be living into faithful in God. For all his brilliance and esteem, nothing compared to God. Bishop Ambrose in Milan – another influential ecclesiastical icon and theologian of the 4th century – was able to field Augustine’s many questions. On Easter 387, he was baptized by Ambrose.

Baptism was a true new beginning for Augustine. He began writing and contemplating his own walk with Christ. He moved back to north Africa. At church one day in 391, the bishop in Hippo preached in the sermon, “This congregation is in need of more priests, and I believe that the ordination of Augustine would be to the glory of God.” As I understand it, people in the congregation – immediately – escorted him to the clergy, the bishop and priests laid hands on him, and he was ordained to the priesthood! (Can you imagine how memorable that day must have been?) This life-changing experience surely played a part in his musings of God’s work in our lives. For example, take the question, “Does a man come to God because he has chosen to do so, or because God has chosen him, and drawn him to Himself?” If you would like to know more about Augustine’s faith journey, his book Confessions is his personal account and one of his many written works.

Another work of Augustine which piqued my interest this morning was De Civitatae Dei (The City of God). While Confessions is a memoir of sorts, this next great work is a fascinating exploration of the role of the Church in the world. He disputes that it was not Christianity that had caused all of the evil in the world (as the Visigoths sacked Rome and the Holy Roman Empire was falling apart at this time). He also examines whether or not Christianity actually makes the world a better place, if this place we live in as the “earthly city” truly has a transcendent counterpart in the “heavenly city” or “city of God”.

Augustine hones his message about good and evil into this fine point in Chapter 4 of The City of God:

“If I am asked…what this City thinks of the supreme good and ultimate evil, the answer would be: She holds that eternal life is the supreme good and eternal death is the supreme evil, and that we should live rightly in order to obtain the one and avoid the other. Hence the Scriptural expression, “the just man lives by faith” (Gal. 3:11) – by faith for the fact is that we do not now behold our good and, therefore, must seek it by faith; nor can we of ourselves even live rightly, unless He who gives us faith helps us to believe and pray, for it takes faith to believe that we need His help.”

He breaks this down even more as he explores the virtues of temperance, prudence, justice, and fortitude. Rather than presenting them as human qualities, these virtues are gifts from God that help us bear the temptations and evil around us. Augustine eviscerates the Stoic concepts of finding good in this present life and that humans can be the source of their own happiness. Having lived fully (and self-indulgently) before his conversion to Christianity, Augustine understands that his own actions did not result in good. Through God’s grace, his eyes have been opened; he is adamant in the reliance upon God for goodness and joy.

Augustine also explores peace, calling it “our highest good”. He says of Jerusalem, “the mystical name which symbolized this City, means, ‘the vision of peace.’” Critiquing the ways we understand peace, the theologian observes that humans often pray for peace on earth – where life is fragile and time is fleeting. Nevertheless, peace is most desired. “Peace is so universally loved that its very name falls sweetly on the ear,” writes Augustine.

Everyone wants peace, and yet people often resort to violence to reach peace for themselves – not withstanding the havoc wreaked upon others. Augustine writes these words that ring true and uncomfortable: “Thus it is that all men want peace in their own society, and all want it in their own way. When they go to war what they want is to make, if they can, their enemies their own, and then to impose on them the victor’s will and call it peace.” (Chapter 12)

Friends, there is unrest all around us, with disease, natural disasters, conflicts at home and abroad. I do not have all of the answers, and neither does Bishop Augustine. However, he does write this about peace, and I share his ancient words of wisdom with you from Chapter 13 of The City of God in closing:

“The peace, then, of the body lies in the ordered equilibrium of all its parts; the peace of the irrational soul, in the balanced adjustment of its appetites; the peace of the reasoning soul, in the harmonious correspondence of conduct and conviction; the peace of body and soul taken together, in the well-ordered life and health of the living whole. Peace between a mortal man and his Maker consists in ordered obedience, guided by faith, under God’s eternal law; peace between man and man consists in regulated fellowship. The peace of a home lies in the ordered harmony of authority and obedience between the members of a family living together. The peace of the political community is an ordered harmony of authority and obedience between citizens. The peace of the heavenly City lies in a perfectly ordered and harmonious communion of those who find their joy in God and in one another in God. Peace, in its final sense, is the calm that comes of order. Order is an arrangement of like and unlike things whereby each of them is disposed in its proper place.”

Katherine+

Questions for Reflection

What do you believe about the sources of good and evil in the world?

What does happiness look like for you today? What does peace mean for you right now?

Daily Challenge

Join me in praying the Collect for Peace (BCP pg. 99):

O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom: Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.