True Peace in Troubled Times

My 10-year-old niece wrote me a letter the other day.  She signed it, "Your depressed niece" and then added, "P.S.  The world is bad."  It really broke my heart.  All of the negative events unfolding recently have an impact on everyone, but children especially feel the unease. 

Back in Pier Giorgio's day, things weren't all that wonderful either.  Here's how one writer summed it up at the time:

"One thing is certain today. Individuals, the different classes of society, the nations of the earth have not as yet found true peace.  This is a sad truth which forces itself upon us from every side."

"Public life is so enveloped, even at the present hour, by the dense fog of mutual hatreds and grievances that it is almost impossible for the common people so much as freely to breathe therein."

"Men today do not act as Christians, as brothers, but as strangers, and even enemies. The sense of man's personal dignity and of the value of human life has been lost in the brutal domination begotten of might and mere superiority in numbers."

"The principal cause of the confusion, restlessness, and dangers which are so prominent a characteristic of false peace is the weakening of the binding force of law and lack of respect for authority, effects which logically follow upon denial of the truth that authority comes from God, the Creator and Universal Law-giver."

Each of these paragraphs could have been written today, instead of nearly 100 years ago.  They come straight out of an encyclical so often quoted by Pier Giorgio Frassati - the first encyclical of Pope Pius XI issued in 1922: "On the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ."

As it has been for Americans lately, it was difficult for Pier Giorgio to see his country falling apart.  In several of his letters, he would express his frustration with current events and quote the words of Pope Pius XI:  "True peace is more a fruit of Christian love for one’s neighbor than it is a fruit of justice."  Because he wrote that line several times, it has always stuck with me. 

It's been rolling around in my mind these past several days.  I find myself thinking about it every time I see a photo of someone holding a sign with the words, "No justice, no peace."  The sign would be more accurate if it read, "No Jesus, no peace."  Because that's really why we've gone off the rails.

A central theme of the papacy of Pius XI was peace.  He even made peace his papal motto.  ("Pax Christi in Regno Christi.")  In his encyclical, he identified the only remedy for this present sort of unrest as the peace of Christ "since the peace of Christ is the peace of God, which could not exist if it did not enjoin respect for law, order, and the rights of authority."

This hit a nerve with Pier Giorgio.  He wanted so much for the world to heed the Holy Father's warning.  He exhorted his peers to greater love in the midst of their troubles writing, "Catholics, we and you, must bring the breath of goodness that can only spring from faith in Christ."  The breath of goodness -- that sure would go a long way in our present world that is suffocating in human sorrow.

Today, I wrote back to my niece and told her that, although there are bad things in the world, the world is not bad.  It's good, I said, because God made it and he made us capable of loving one another.  These days, I need to believe that as much as she does.  Prove me right.

Blessed Pier Giorgio, lover of peace, pray for us.

Verso l'alto!  ///cmw