Risen Jesus always appears to His disciples with this greeting: “Peace be with you” (John 20:21). But what kind of peace is this?
The Hebrew word “Shalom” does not simply mean the absence of war, but it refers to the tranquility, the interior serenity that manifests itself in peace with ourselves, with God and with our neighbor. Therefore, the peace that the Holy Spirit gives is, above all, that profound and luminous balance which then radiates all around us. Jesus, in fact, in the Diaries of Luisa stresses that peace is like a really fragrant flower perfuming the place where it is located. Thus, the soul that possesses peace is filled with God.
Peace is the springtime of the soul; all virtues bloom, grow and smile like plants and flowers under the rays of the spring sun which have the nature to produce each of its fruits. If it wasn’t for the spring, that with its charming smile stirs the plants from the torpor of the cold and clothes the ground with a flowered mantle calling everyone with its sweet enchantment to be looked at, the land would be hideous and the plants would end up dried out. So peace is the divine smile that stirs the soul from every torpor, that, like celestial spring, shakes the soul from the cold of passions, of weaknesses, of superficiality. With its smile, peace makes every flower bloom and every plant grow more than in a flowered field, among which the celestial Farmer deigns to walk and gather the fruits in order to make of them His food. The peaceful soul is the garden of God in which He recreates and amuses Himself.
Jesus, during His earthly life in His Sermon on the Mount, said: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Mt 5:9). Jesus therefore exalts the builders of peace, that true peace which man does not know because, in his life, agitation, stress, anxiety, and fear dominate. Even our Celestial Mother, the Queen of Peace, when she asks Luisa to pray Jesus to hold back His scourges, says that in the moral world she observes a war that is horrifying to see, but the first food that one should search for in society, in families and in every soul should be peace. All of the other foods become unhealthy without it, even if they may be virtues themselves; charity. Repentance without peace bears neither health nor true holiness, yet today’s world has discarded this food of peace so necessary and healthy, and one wants nothing other than turbulence and war. Therefore, only he who is in Christ, the Prince of Peace, can experience true peace in his heart.
Jesus teaches that peace puts all passions in their place, but what triumphs over all, establishes all the good in the soul and sanctifies all is doing everything for God, operating with the upright intention of pleasing God alone. Upright operating is what directs, dominates, rectifies the virtues themselves, even obedience itself. In short, it is like a master who directs the spiritual music of the soul.
Jesus furthermore, also in the diaries of Luisa, speaks to us about the effects of peace and affirms that when the soul is at peace and her whole being tends toward Jesus, drops of light drip from the soul that fall on her garment and form its ornament. On the other hand, the disturbed soul drips darkness which forms the diabolical ornament. Not only that, but disturbance impedes the way to grace and renders it unable to operate good. Only by constancy, peace and patience can we know who is working in us, for where there is no God, there can be no firmness, peace, or true good either.
The Scriptures teach how one can know the peace of God: first and foremost, obeying the Lord, putting His Word into practice. So only he who receives Jesus in his heart and obeys can come to know His peace. To this end, Jesus confirms to Luisa that there is no true peace without obedience and if it appears that one enjoys peace, it is false peace. It seems like peace because it gets on well with our passions, but not with the virtues and eventually ends up ruined because, deviating from obedience, we deviate from Jesus who was the King of this noble virtue. The Scriptures encourage us to pursue all that which produces peace and edification, contrasting the opposite work put into act by the enemy: “Let us therefore seek the things which make for peace and the building up of one another” (Romans 14:19).
During His earthly life, Jesus continually grants peace and orders the Apostles to be messengers of His peace. In His farewell discourse, Jesus strongly asserts: “Let not your hearts be troubled… Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you” (John 14:1,27). Therefore, the peace of God that surpasses every human intelligence keeps not only the heart, but also the mind in Christ. He, in fact, repeats that peace is light to the soul, light to one’s neighbor and light to God. So a soul at peace is always light and, being light, remains always united to the Eternal Light, where he draws always new light in order to be able to give to others. Moreover, when the creature leaves everything, she works and loves divinely, enjoys the peace of Jesus and has the sentinel of peace that keeps everything that can disturb her away. Jesus has so much love and interest in maintaining the soul at peace that He is forced to even perform miracles in order to preserve the soul at peace. His peace is perennial, His thoughts peaceful, His words are filled with peace. Therefore, what sense of peace one feels thinking about that which Jesus always repeats in the diaries of Luisa! And that is that only peaceful souls are the canes where He leans, and when iniquities tear the scourges out of His hands, leaning on these canes, He does always less than what He should do.
Peace also means bringing justice among men. Unfortunately, government leaders don’t always minister to that effect and, as a result, their government actions often have the imprint of instability. Once again, Jesus confirms that true peace comes from God. Governments frequently feel the rug being pulled out from under their feet, and accordingly, [Jesus] uses all means necessary to make them return to their senses and let them know that only from Him can they hope for true and lasting peace. And He will do unexpected and unforeseen things to confuse them and to make them understand the instability of human things and of their own instability and that only God is the stable Being from Whom they can hope for every good and, if they want justice and peace, they must go to the true source of true justice and true peace.
True peace therefore arises, above all, from the heart of man. Pope Benedict XVI, in his book on Jesus, states: “Discord with God is the starting point of all the poisonings of man; overcoming it forms the fundamental prerequisite of world peace. Only man reconciled with God can be reconciled and in harmony with himself, and only man reconciled with God and with himself can bring peace around himself and into the whole world”. Jesus, in fact, continues to reiterate that peace is dominion, not only of oneself, but of others who, before a peaceful soul, remain either conquered or confused and humiliated; so they either let themselves be dominated remaining friends or they leave confused non being able to sustain the dignity, calmness, and sweetness of a soul that possesses peace; even the most perverse feel the power that it contains. That’s why Jesus glories so much in having Himself called “Prince of Peace”, because there is no peace without Him. He alone possesses it and gives it to His children as to His legitimate children. Peace is a divine virtue and the other virtues are human, so all of the other virtues, if they are not crowned by peace, cannot be called virtues but vices. Peace is of such great concern to Jesus because peace is the surest sign that one operates for Him and it is the inheritance that He gives to His children, an inheritance of eternal peace that will be enjoyed in Heaven together with Him.