This is an excellent question and I would like to add my two cents to the discussion here. Later, if it’s appropriate, I’ll share some theological thoughts on this. But for now I would like to share some of my experience in this area.
To me inner peace is the grand silence of the soul. For example, I come onto CAF because there are people here whom I like very much and with whom I enjoy communicating. We learn from each other and we offer each other spiritual support. However, there are times when I run into posts where people are cruel or make statements that are totally unacceptable and dead wrong. Like most human beings I tend to get upset at these. What I have learned is to keep my inner silence by reminding myself that I can’t change what they are or what they say.
St. Bernadette once told a bishop something that I have used a lot on CAF. The bishop was asking her some tough questions about her visions. She answered, “Msgr. I have been sent to tell you the truth, not to convince you.” That has always worked for me. When I come up against people who don’t want to be reasonable or to dialogue, but just want to attack, I remind myself that God has not sent me into the world to convince anyone of anything, but only to tell the world the truth of what he has said and done for us. This gives me great peace.
Another source of peace for me has been my own Franciscan formation. I’m a Secular Franciscan Brother. My wife died when my children were very young and I raised them alone. Today they are young adults (19 and 24). I remember the night that she died as if it were today. I cried because I was afraid of being left behind with two very young kids, one with autism. But I also cried because I was not going home and he was. Suddenly, I realized that my joy was now complete, because our holy father Francis has taught us in his rule and through his life to live the Gospel very literally, above all to embrace the cross. The cross had been used by the Romans as an instrument of torture, but Christ had converted it into a portal to God’s mercy. My wife’s death and having to raise two young children alone was my doorway into God’s mercy. I can’t explain the happiness that overcame me. I had found my cross. In other words, I had found my doorway to Heaven.
My ministry within the Church is another great source of peace. As I work each day to touch other people’s lives and to accept them as God accepts them to love them as God loves them, I have a harder time getting angry at them. Even when I get angry, it doesn’t last long. I can usually find it in my heart and mind to blow it off, because I am poor. St. Francis told us to embrace the poverty of Christ and to be the smallest in the Kingdom of Heaven. By becoming the smallest, I’m finding that I don’t have any right to a sense of entitlement. Whatever good comes my way comes as a gift from God. Whatever good I do is done by God. Whatever good I say is said by God. My job is to be a needle in God’s hand as he sews the great tapestry of life and eternity.
Finally, there is prayer. My daily routine is pretty simple. I get up early in the morning and pray the Liturgy of the Hours. On my way to work I pray the rosary in the car. On my way home I stop in for a visit with my best friend in the Tabernacle. If you could only imagine how much I think of him during the day and how much I imagine him in my mind exposed before me under the appearance of bread and wine. It gives me a great sense of joy. I can’t explain it all the time. In the evening there is Liturgy of the Hours, spiritual reading, meditation, silent prayer and finally I turn off the light and go to bed with my rosary in hand praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. There are the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.
Woven into all of this there are my family obligations, my obligations to my Franciscan community, my duties at work and my duties in the diocese and in my parish. I don’t have time to waste looking for peace. I just have to wait for God to provide it. In the meantime, I just blow off the storms that come my way. The world is not perfect and people within the Church are imperfect too. But I can’t take time to worry about that or argue about it. I have things to do and people to serve. I’ll deal with those when they cross my path, in God’s time and on his terms.
Just my two cents.
Fraternally,
JR
