When Peace No Longer Depends Upon What Happens

Courage is born when the heart ceases to demand that the world make God trustworthy

“The essence of Christ’s peace lies in his perfect knowledge of the Father.”

— St. Sophrony of Essex, His Life Is Mine

There comes a point in the spiritual life when peace can no longer mean that things have been resolved.

Perhaps this is one of the most difficult truths we ever learn.

For much of our lives, we imagine peace as the fruit of circumstances finally coming into order. A door opens. A question is answered. A conflict ends. Someone understands us. The future becomes intelligible. We discover what we are supposed to do, and having discovered it, we imagine that the trembling of the heart will cease.

But this is not the peace Christ gives.

“My peace I give unto you.”

He spoke these words on the threshold of Gethsemane.

That alone should undo most of our notions about peace.

Christ did not possess peace because the Cross had been removed from His path. His peace remained because the Father had not been removed from His heart.

This is the terrible beauty of St. Sophrony’s insight. The peace of Christ proceeds from His perfect knowledge of the Father. Therefore Christian peace is not principally the experience of being safe. It is the fruit of knowing Whose we are.

And perhaps this explains why courage is so rare.

We often think that courage means becoming strong enough to face uncertainty. But the Fathers understood something deeper. Courage appears when we cease demanding certainty before we will entrust ourselves to God.

The desert was filled with men and women who possessed almost nothing that we ordinarily associate with security. They had abandoned reputation, possessions, predictable futures, even the consolations of ordinary human society. Yet something slowly emerged within them that the world could neither give nor understand.

They discovered that God is.

Not that God will arrange everything according to their understanding.

Not that God will explain Himself.

Not that obedience will spare them anguish.

God is.

And eventually this became enough.

Perhaps this is why the Jesus Prayer becomes so precious when other words lose their strength. There are seasons when explanations become almost unbearable. Counsel may be wise and nevertheless fail to reach the place where the soul is suffering. Possibilities are examined. Doors open and close. One tries to act honestly, without anger, without self-deception, without grasping at an outcome simply because uncertainty has become exhausting.

And eventually very little remains.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

The Name remains.

And strangely, this poverty can become the beginning of courage.

I have begun to understand more deeply that much of what I once called peace was actually reassurance. I wanted to know where things were going. I wanted some correspondence between what had become clear within the heart and what could actually be accomplished outwardly. I wanted the road ahead to possess a shape that I could recognize.

But God does not promise this.

He promises Himself.

The distinction is immense.

When we lack enduring peace, it is often because some part of us is still bargaining with reality: I will rest when this is settled. I will trust when the path becomes clear. I will surrender when I know what surrender will cost me.

But this is not yet surrender.

The desert begins precisely where bargaining ends.

St. Sophrony speaks of the man of prayer returning to the world “dead” to much that once fascinated him. This death is not contempt for creation. It is freedom from demanding that created things bear the weight of eternity.

No institution can bear that weight.

No human judgment can bear it.

No identity can bear it.

No resolution of our circumstances can bear it.

Even those whom we love cannot bear it.

Only God can be God.

Perhaps this is why one of the most necessary truths for me has become so simple:

I am not Providence.

I do not need to know how every thread will be gathered. I do not need to force open a door because another has closed. I do not need to secure tomorrow before I can be faithful today.

There is a strange violence in our attempts to make life disclose itself before its hour. We exhaust ourselves trying to occupy a place that belongs only to God.

The Fathers continually call us back from this fantasy.

Stay in your cell.

Keep your mind in hell and despair not.

Remember God.

Attend to yourself.

Pray.

Love the person placed before you.

Do the next thing that love requires.

And leave the universe in the hands of the One who created it.

This is not passivity. It may require greater courage than action.

For there are times when action is merely another form of escape. We move because remaining before God without an answer is unbearable. We speak because silence exposes our poverty. We construct futures because the present moment seems too small to contain a vocation.

Yet God is often waiting precisely there.

In the small room.

In the hidden life.

In caring for the person entrusted to us.

In making a meal.

In helping a frail body rise from a chair.

In saying the Holy Name while nothing outward appears to change.

The great temptation is to believe that somewhere else the real spiritual life is taking place.

The desert fathers knew better.

The desert is wherever there is nowhere left to flee from God.

And perhaps courage finally means consenting to remain there.

Not because we feel courageous.

Not because darkness has lifted.

Not because everything has become comprehensible.

But because Christ is there.

Then the suffering that once occupied the whole field of consciousness slowly moves, as St. Sophrony says, toward the periphery. It does not necessarily disappear. Questions may remain questions. Loss remains loss. The body grows tired. Human misunderstanding still wounds. The future may remain hidden.

But something deeper has become immovable.

God is.

I am before Him.

He knows me.

That is enough.

This is the beginning of the peace that the world cannot give because the world cannot take it away.

And perhaps this is why faith is truly the victory that overcomes the world. Not because faith guarantees that events will turn in our favor, but because the heart has discovered something greater than events.

It has discovered the Father.

Then courage is no longer something we manufacture.

It is what remains when there is finally nothing left to defend except fidelity to God.

And peace is no longer the reward we receive when the storm ends.

It is Christ Himself, asleep in the boat.

The storm may continue.

The night may remain dark.

The shore may still be invisible.

But He is here.

And gradually the heart learns that this is enough.