Inner peace
Inner peace
Are we truly gentle and are we therefore at peace internally?
Gentleness is related to inner peace. When Christ entered a home, or when He met someone, the first thing He said was Shalom, âPeace be with youâ: if we are not at peace, we cannot see God in the other. Gentleness begins thereâŠ
Tenderness: it is not because someone is a male that he canât be tender. I want to immediately remove that idea from peopleâs minds. Tenderness is innate and part of the soul. It is truly the love of God expressing itself through people, through words, through comforting, through a gesture. Thatâs what tenderness is.
Gentleness is something else: âBlessed are the gentle people, for they shall see God.â This is a remarkable parable. What does it mean to âsee Godâ, because we do not see Him? That is the problem with gentleness, which is related to inner peace. When Christ entered a home, or when He met someone, the first thing He said was Shalom, âPeace be with youâ: If we are not at peace, we cannot see God in the other. Gentleness begins there. That is, we look at the other as the living Christ, but we do not know it!
You also mentioned just now something interesting: many atheists or Buddhists or Moslems or Jews are also gentle by nature. This nature can be improved; the levels of nervousness, that is our ability of wanting to do things because they must be done, our overwhelming daily stress or anxiety, whether about the monthâs end, or about certain personalities or behaviours in our families, the gentle person cannot not recognize a good person, and goodness is God. Gentleness is being able to see the other, without having to speak; we do not need to speak if we are at peace !
What is inner peace? The soul is like an inner lake: the soul resides in the plexus, but it is in fact everywhere, in each of our billions of cells! Its âbedâ is there! From the moment that we have inner peace, when our soul becomes like a lake, then any serious event that occurs in our daily life will not shake us up inside. Inner peace is truly an undertaking that we force upon ourselves. And it isnât easy because it gets confusing: we think âpeaceâ means to not say anything, but no! Not-speaking is not peace! Speaking-out is not peace either⊠Peace is truly an effort on ourselves, that is, to simply discover how our soul becomes calm. Why ? Because we are at peace with our conscience.
As I have often mentioned, for instance at St Ouen, how do we spend our day? Do we assess our day? If we look at ourselves before going to sleep at night: âI should have done such and such, I didnât do this, I forgot to say thatâŠâ These are little things, yet they are important because they trouble our soul. When we havenât done what we were supposed to: cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children or whatever else⊠errands we said we would run, if we havenât filled our day with the small daily tasks, then in the evening we realize that we forgot to do things. We did not keep our promises to ourselves. From that moment, our soul cannot be at peace. It can only find peace when we accomplish our mission, when we do what needs to be done, without thinking about what we will do in the next hour, or next day.
Simply live in the present, and from that moment on, the soul will be at peace. This means when a problem arises, or someone announces negative news, like the illness of a loved one, for instance, you will remain calm and not get worn out, running all over the place. Instead, you will remain calm. And there, in this calm, gentleness will be born. It wonât be just an appearance, because one does not move or doesnât show stress on the outside, but it is true calm⊠True inner peace is there; gentleness springs forth from this humility.
Humility can only come by way of our inner peace. That means that even though we truly understand that we are of utmost importance to God, we are only but a grain of sand in the universe.
We must therefore recognize that everything is magnificent. The Creator has done splendid things for us. He loves us above all else, yet at the same time, we are quite small, because our lives can disappear in a snapâŠ