One of my favorite Christmas movies is Joyeux Noel, a foreign film about the truce of 1914 on Christmas Eve in the midst of World War I. I find the juxtaposition of war and peace ironic and beautiful, powerful even, probably because all of us are icons of both war and peace at any given moment in time. Consider our interior lives during this holy season of Advent: we increasingly vacillate between restlessness or busyness and periods of calm. So much can be said about war, especially because of the global political and religious unrest facing many of our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the world. How can peace reign in such chaos? What is the interior versus exterior war we face today, and how can peace supersede such calamity?
War itself conjures images of military regiments marching into combat. Some of us are averse to this (for good reason), while others are empowered by the spiritual metaphor of battle. Christmas, however, seems so contrary to war. It is a time, we are told, to set aside our differences and focus on unity for the sake of peace. Perhaps this momentary hiatus from verbal combat, misunderstandings, confrontations, and estrangements (especially during the holidays) is useful, but it is not a permanent solution.
The message of Christianity is bold, radical, and countercultural. That is why such suffering and martyrdom continues even as I write this. To stand for Jesus is to stand against all that is not Him or of Him, and perhaps Christmas reminds us that it’s easier to halt all hatred for the sake of an innocent baby, namely Jesus. It doesn’t make sense to fight when we ponder the infant Jesus or gaze upon Him in our hearts. Cease-fires are laudable, but “all oppression shall cease” (from the hymn, O Holy Night). This can only be so when Jesus is supreme ruler of every heart in every land. What idyll! But such a lofty goal can be attained through you and through me. It begins with one heart that is changed and then moves another to conversion.
All peace begins in the human heart. Peace on earth cannot reign worldwide until individual hearts are transformed by the message of the Incarnation, which is one of mercy but also division. Jesus Himself said, “I have come not for peace, but the sword” (Mt. 10:34). With such conflicting messages, we are inclined toward perplexity, but essentially the First War plagued us with the interior battle we all face, while the First Christmas bore the only redemption humanity would ever receive.
Even as we light our Advent candles and perhaps quiet ourselves for reflection during the long winter nights, we are keenly aware of the wars raging within and around us. We cannot escape such truth, and yet we remain hopeful in the midst of such madness, for we hope for what we do not see. The war within us is one of the devil, the flesh, and the world. We cannot evade any of these adversaries, but all serve one purpose: so that we may rise above such temptations with the help of Divine Grace. Remember, dear warriors, that war presents us with an opportunity for victory – victory in Jesus.
The irony of the Christ-child reminds us that, indeed, He was born not to resolve the human condition through tolerance, but rather through a violent death. We cannot ignore the very real violence that befalls us on a daily basis, but the baby Jesus is our beacon under the Bethlehem star. We follow Him, like the Magi, no matter what the environmental conditions or consequences. Like those who traversed on the first Christian pilgrimage, we do not deny the war storming inside us as we face tragedies in our families, senseless acts of violence in our communities, and even our own weaknesses, faults and vices. We face them, but with the hope that Advent springs forth – the Dawn, the Light, the Way.
To acquire peace, then, is not to deny war or even to vehemently battle against everyone and everything that hinders our personal growth. Peace is not merely the absence of war, for all might be relatively calm around us, but we recognize the silent scream of anxiety that remains in our hearts. The world will tell us that tolerance is synonymous to peace, that all we have to do is accept everyone’s differences and coexist. But the Incarnation speaks a story of uncertainty, near hopelessness, emptiness, struggle, and risk. Tolerance did not bear the Word-made-Flesh, but peace was on the wings of St. Gabriel at the Annunciation. Peace was also on his wings at the Incarnation.
Peace is a fruit of the Holy Spirit which is cultivated through spiritual maturation. This occurs through pruning and purgation – the fight against ourselves that is necessary to attain Christmas victory. Peace often follows intense trials and interior wrestling, but it settles in one’s heart on the advent of self-mortification. The moment Jesus is born in our hearts – that moment when our fiat joins that of Our Lady’s – is when His will unites to ours in the same way His heart is one with His mother’s. That is the advent of peace, because we no longer wish to entertain or engage war, but we know that we are not exempt from it. While we no longer seek lively debates or intense verbal altercations, the battle from outside will inevitably attempt to draw us out of our interior hermitage where “all is calm and all is bright” (from the beloved hymn, Silent Night).
So peace, then, occurs when we cease interacting with or seeking the storms of life and instead retreat to where the Christ-child lay sleeping in the manger we have made for Him in our hearts. The quietude of such a heart is enough for the baby Jesus to peacefully rest in us, as we rest in Him. Though the battles continue to fume outside of us, we are filled with the “peace that surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) as we approach our Savior as a tiny, helpless infant. Peace reigns in us when we reign in Jesus, and that is our Christmas victory.
