Looking at peace from what is apparently visible,
it would be a state of human relations at the social level, without war and
without violence. And from the plane of the entirely personal and private one
can speak of a state of serenity undisturbed by human passions or by pursuit of
interests.
But peace at a macro level, although more concrete,
is public peace understood as concord and harmony between the citizens of the
same community or the same State. But curiously, this public peace would not
necessarily arise from a private or personal peace, as deduced from social
analysis, but would arise as a result of a "collective feeling", or
common meaning by virtue of which citizens accept a civil obedience concretized
in laws and a repression of the violence that an individual or many exercise
against others. In this case, despite the importance that this "collective
feeling" may have, it is not the reality of peace in itself, but a
manifestation of it and that only becomes effective, specifically, by
subjecting it to acceptance. of repressive regulations by citizens.
Up to this point, peace would seem to be only an
effect produced by the creativity of human beings, but nevertheless, humanity
is aware that this human product is one of the greatest achievements it can
achieve, as stated throughout history.
Peace as an exclusive gift of God
It must be stated in general that peace, as it
appears in the Bible, is the supreme state of human existence that
lives in harmony with nature, with its brothers, with itself and with God. It
is not the product of legal and political existential security, nor is it a
result of the harmonious relationship between the individual and society;
rather these earthly realities are founded on peace itself and therefore this
is a previous reality that has always existed in man himself. It is the
gift of God in him.
But what do we mean by the gift of God? Peace is
not simply a thing or an object other than God himself, nor is it an action
exercised by him other than himself. This means that if peace is God himself
giving himself to man in his own self, it is a divine existential
already given in man himself, which not only guides but dynamizes the harmony
of man with his brothers, with the world, with himself, Himself and
with God, to the extent that each human being becomes aware of that reality,
opens himself to it without resisting, and creatively becomes an agent of that
same harmony with his brothers.
The search for peace
In the common language of our people and in a
simplistic vision, peace would be a commitment that would come to us from the
parties that generate violence or the product of an agreement between them, as
a generosity of the agents of violence. Therefore, the search for peace could
be an interested pressure from all citizens based on that commitment in order
to be able to live in peace and be allowed to enjoy the accumulation of their
assets. On the other hand, such an arrangement would be nothing more than an
opportunity seized on the basis of the continuous threat and the actions of
unlimited barbarism to obtain the greatest possible amount of all kinds of
interests; therefore, what would be sought would be these same interests.
Hence, this vision of the search for peace cannot
be consistent with what peace is in its pure reality, as a transcendent value
and therefore as a gift from God.
In this context, the meaning of the word of Jesus
in the Gospel of John is clear: "My peace I give you, not as the world
gives it to you, but as I give it to you." (Jn 14,27). Here peace is the
risen Christ himself giving himself to believers, in communion with each one of
them, making them capable of God's peace and configuring them as witnesses of
it.
