Peace from Passion |
As reminded by St Paul, Christians on the ascetic path are at war—“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds,” (2 Cor 10:3–5). St Neilos the Ascetic further clarifies that as long as the passions oppress and there is war against the will of the flesh, “we should constantly keep hold of our weapons; otherwise, our enemies will take advantage of our relaxation and overpower us without a fight.” [1]
Simply, to walk is to war. But, what of those who seek peace?
Jesus’ fame was spreading as he went about proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. As the crowd built around him, he stepped upon a high mound and described those who shall truly be blessed (makarios, μακάριος), experiencing divine blissfulness. Within these beatitudes, he says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God,” (Matt 5:9).
Commenting, St Gregory of Nyssa defines peace, in its simplest form, as a loving disposition toward one’s neighbor, and able to extinguish all opposing passions—"just as illness vanishes when health supervenes, and as no darkness is left when light begins to shine, so also when peace appears, all the passions connected with its opposite are eliminated.”[2]
St Gregory adds that the beatitude of peacemaking does not only regard the good of others, but also the good of self—with benefits to the war of control against the passions. For the one who is properly called a peacemaker, par excellence, is the one who pacifies the discord between flesh and spirit, and brings peace within the civil war of human nature, so that the law (nomos, νόμος), or way of life of the body in its mortal state no longer wars against the law of the mind, but “is subjected to the higher rule and becomes a servant of the divine ordinance.”[3]
For the one who has attained dispassion, says St Isaiah the Solitary, “the contest comes to an end; he receives the prize of victory and has no further anxiety about the three [body, soul, spirt] that were divided, for now through God they have made peace with one another.”[4] Simply, from St Neilos the Ascetic: “Those who have subdued all the passions are no longer troubled by warfare.”[5]
In turn, within those who have struggled to attain holiness (yet in their great humility think that they are not yet victorious), the weapons of war once held for self-defense can be beaten and reshaped into instruments of agriculture—‘Beat your swords into ploughshares, and your spears into pruning hooks ...’ (cf. Isa 2:4), diverting them from warfare to the cultivation of others.[6]
Understood this way, true peace within the ascetical struggle is cultivated through love for others, and is experienced within oneself, as fruit of walking in the Spirit (Gal 5:22). It is the presence and indwelling of the Holy Spirit about whom Jesus reassured his disciples for the present age: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (Jn 14:27).
“The one who has prayed for peace for all has cast out the war of passions ...
Love knows no war, has no enemy, it advocates for peace."[7]
References
[1] Neilos the Ascetic. “Ascetic Discourse,” in The Philokalia 1, G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, ed. (Faber and Faber, 1979), 221.
[2] Gregory of Nyssa. The Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes (Homily 4), H.C. Graef, trans. (Florence, AZ: SAGOM Press, 2021), 150.
[3] Gregory of Nyssa, The Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes (Homily 7), 156.
[4] Isaiah the Solitary. On Guarding the Intellect” (7), in The Philokalia 1, G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, ed. (Faber and Faber, 1979), 25–26.
[5] Neilos the Ascetic, Ascetic Discourse, 221.
[6] Neilos the Ascetic, Ascetic Discourse, 221–222.
[7] Sacred Parallels (50), in catholiclibary.org.