Let Peace be our Quest and Aim

Let Peace be our Quest and Aim

“The Rule of St Benedict” is a wisdom document that was written over 1500 years ago, yet it still has a lot to offer for our times. In fact, it may be very much needed, as it was a document that aimed to foster community through the practices of hospitality and humility. In the prologue it quotes Psalm 34: “Keep your tongue free from vicious talk and your lips from all deceit; turn away from evil and do good; let peace be your quest and aim.” I think we all find the pursuit of peace very difficult. Our tongue and lips easily say what we do not want them to say. 

Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister writes in her commentary of this that “When we’re driven by agitation, consumed by fretting, we become immersed in our own agenda, and it is always exaggerated. We get caught up in things that, in the final analysis, simply don’t count, in things that pass away, in things that are concerned with living comfortably rather than with living well…we lose touch with the center of things.” In other words, in our haste and in our anxiety, we forget who we are – beloved children of God – and become ‘violent’ towards others in our desire to achieve and be comfortable. 

My feeling is that we need to be very gentle with ourselves because we have so often become caught up in the culture that is all around us. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk commented that by allowing ourselves, “to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns”, surrendering “to too many demands”, committing ourselves “to too many projects”, wanting “to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our time.” In the process, we are not able to be attentive to ourselves or our neighbour; we are not able to love. 

I’m taken with the fact that despite the many failings that monastic orders throughout the ages have experienced, there still was in them a desire for regular prayer as well as work. Prayer and work were considered one and the same. Neither was to take precedence over the other. If you are anything like me, we hardly know what we pray in church, rushing onto the next thing we need to do. In our desire to cross off our ‘to-do’ list, we forget to pause and pray, even without words. Silence and stillness in our lives are qualities covered over by noise and haste. 

To re-member what is most important in our lives, we need each other. We need spaces in our lives where we are able to receive the gift of grace and peace, the gift of each other – for we are not separate selves but interconnected beings. The enemy is not ‘out there’ but in ourselves, when we use our tongues for harm and not to build up each other. How we negotiate differences with love is difficult for all of us and so we need to be prayerful people. We need a Power greater than ourselves, the Love that never ends, or as Merton said, “mercy within mercy within mercy.”