Dear Family and Friends,

I don’t know about you but I am so tired of the news. Given the divisiveness and hatred spewing all around us, are you struggling to find peace? I am.

Jesus once said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”  ‭‭John‬ ‭14‬:‭27‬ ‭NIV‬‬

When there’s breaking news from a war zone (whether it be Ukraine, Gaza or Congress), have you ever wondered why you don’t feel at peace as Jesus promised? I do.

Perhaps we’ve been expecting the wrong kind of peace. We usually think of peace as being free of conflict and turmoil.

This is the kind of peace the world gives. One that’s dependent on our surroundings and is therefore temporal. And given the way things are going…

The peace of Jesus is much greater.

His is a peace that surpasses all understanding. That withstood the physical, emotional and spiritually painful events of that Friday.

His is a peace in which our hearts and minds – our souls – are in a state of tranquility, assured of salvation through Christ.

So, how do we experience this peace that Jesus gave us?

Let’s begin with this observation by Saint Augustine, one of the great theologians of Christianity.

I paraphrase, “sin originates from wrongly ordered love.”

Augustine realized that we have our priorities out of order, and that we love things in the wrong order.

That because Jesus said all the Law hang on the commandments to love God and others as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40), when other things are loved more than these, we sin.

Recall how sin began – with a desire for wisdom like God’s. (See Genesis 3:6 NIV)

Adam and Eve sinned because their love was wrongly ordered. God was no longer their first love.

And when their love became disordered, everything, their lives and the world, fell into disorder.

Disordered love leads to anxiety.

Disordered love also leaves us restless and unfulfilled; unable to experience true peace.

So, what can we do?

We can stop seeking and hoping for peace because it doesn’t work.

Instead we can reorder any disordered love in our lives, and make God our first love.

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Saint Augustine

Allow me to close with Augustine’s practical advice on how to order our love. This first section is paraphrased.

A just and holy person:

Does not love what he should not love.
Does not fail to love what he should.
Does not love equally that which should be loved either less or more.
Does not love more or less that which should be loved equally.  

“No sinner is to be loved as a sinner; and every man is to be loved as a man for God’s sake; but God is to be loved for His own sake.

And if God is to be loved more than any man, each man ought to love God more than himself.”
Saint Augustine, On Christian Doctrine.

In love always,