Cultivating Peace in the Midst of Anxiety

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day (Matthew 6:34).

The world around us has grown increasingly wild in its clamor for our attention.  More than ever, there are scandals, tragedies, and international emergencies foaming and writhing before our eyes and clawing at our hearts.  To ignore them, to even refrain from making public comment on these issues, is held by public opinion to be the grave sin of our age.  At times, it seems there can be nothing about which one is entitled to a private opinion because there are no longer hills upon which men might not choose to die.

While the impulse is laudable, and the natural desire of man for justice is a holy whisper or a divine fingerprint, the Christian exhortation to test spirits remains an invaluable counsel.  Setting aside the possibility that large financial interests are at play when the 24-hour news cycle chooses which stories to tell (and re-tell), and in determining the language with which these stories are described, it’s clear that before we can begin to process the grief of the wider world, we need to have a well of peace from which to draw.

Anxiety

It’s not as if anxiety is a modern invention.  Indeed, there have always been nagging worries for society- will we get the grain in the ground on time? Will we get enough rain? How will I clothe my children? What if our nation goes to war or if war comes to us? While these worries, to the modern sensibility, seem in some ways remote, they stand at the heart of all human anxiety. We are a fragile creature, poised on the crust of a fragile world, balanced precariously on the tilt of a solar system, and dragged about by natural forces beyond our control.  To be alive, it would seem, is to possess a preoccupation with the preservation of life. But this animal instinct, while it cannot be called bad is also an incomplete spirituality. It is also one of the greatest temptations to beset us because, like all truly seductive lures, its abuse plays upon a natural and good inclination.

Birds, fish, and beasts move through a cycle of appetites from birth to death, never once knowing the anxiety of tomorrow.  The meal before them is the supreme focus of their being. They are always present in the moment.  It is not so with us, for to place the cup to the lip is to know that the bottle will run dry.

Christ’s Vision- Peace

In the sixth chapter of Matthew, Christ lays out his vision for a whole being. His people would be a people marked by something which the world could never give, any more than the world could understand it. But he framed it in a curiously savage garb- we are to be like the birds of the air who neither sow nor reap but trust in the natural process of life that the food they need will be found.

Surely Christ does not mean what he says! Birds starve just as people do, because even their food may run out, or they may be eaten by another who is stronger or hungrier than they.  By using such a simple image, Christ is calling us to consider something in simpler terms than our experience allows. We are called, indeed, to be simple. He does not say of course that we will not die, nor even that animals never hunger. Hunger is what drives the animal to eat in the first place! No, we are told simply that we are to be a people who are not excessively occupied with the emptying of the bottle or in the passing of time.  We are given a simple if difficult target instead. We are called to seek first the Kingdom, and the righteousness of God.  The promised gift is of course that all these things – clothing, food, peace, and stability – are added to those who do as he says.

An Ordering of Desires

St. Augustine speaks of ordering our loves, and this ordering is an exercise in simple prudence.  To love my neighbor rightly, I must do so for God’s sake. To truly eat a meal to the glory of God, I must do so with respect to the Virtues God has revealed and to which He has called us.

This seeking that Jesus speaks of is the truest ordering of desires.  There is no stability, no peace, nor fullness, nor freedom apart from the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. By desiring the Kingdom, and seeking what God seeks for it, we enjoin ourselves to the will of God, just as Christ did in his earthly ministry.

His entire life on earth is an icon of perfect obedience and submission to the will of God. When we, in the broken and stumbling manner of children learning to walk, mimic our Lord, we find slowly but surely that we become more like him – the little Christ’s our name implies.  This has a simple yet profound effect on our life in the world and in the way we participate in her many woes.

We simply cannot give what we do not have.

The world can give us no lasting peace, nor can it really understand the peace in a saint who lays down his life for a stranger.  We cannot offer that peace which this anxious age requires if we don’t have it ourselves, and it’s hard to have peace when we spend every moment consumed with the grievous headlines surrounding us.  Of the many lessons we were offered last year, one I think we all might have learned was to find time for silence.  We don’t actually need to be consumed with the scandals or shortcomings of our neighbors, the performance of leaders, or even the failings of broken men in the Church.

Sin Can Poison the Body of Christ

Of course, we must not allow the leaven of sin to poison the Sacred Body of Christ, of whom we in the Church are confessed, mystical members by Grace, yet there is a difference between the social activism of our day and our Savior’s casting out of the moneychangers.

Considering the example of Christ, it was recalled by the Apostles that Christ’s zeal for the house of God had a divine root and not a cultural or natural cause.  Indeed injustice ignites our anger (or at least should by its very nature), yet we who bear the weight of concupiscence – that inclination toward choosing sin – seldom desire anything for purely holy motives.

With so many of the zealots of our cultural moment, it is not evidently love of God nor even love of neighbor which drives our actions, but largely, it seems that many of us are driven by the strong winds of emotion alone.  These are dangerous seas indeed, but the greater risk is the loss of peace from which we can find the strength to actually make an impact on the ills we strive so hard to rectify.

I would never encourage walling-off the Church from the world completely because we are called to evangelize and convert a dying people and a broken world in need of the life that we possess.  But I want to encourage you, truly, to breathe and allow yourself seasons of relief from the assault of information. As our Lord asks us, “which of you, by being anxious, can add one cubit to his span of life?”(Matthew 6:25).

Do Not Worry

I do not think we should give up hope, nor should we resign the world to burn.  We have work at hand that God has given us. This is precisely what Jesus tells us when He exhorts us not to worry about tomorrow because today has enough worry of its own.  We are called to act, certainly, and indeed to speak, though far less often the latter than we would like to believe.

Let us look for the promised power of the Spirit in the life of the Church, may our prayer with the Church be that well-ordered invocation of the Holy Ghost that so many of us pray as a novena from Ascension to Pentecost. In this way, may we find God’s peace has filled our hearts anew, and from that fulness let us pour out the peace of Christ into the world.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love.  Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.