The Contemplative Life and the Peace of the Cross
“In Christ crucified there is the new order of the human being turned toward God, in peace in himself, and in peace with all others.”
The Cross of Jesus emerges within our cosmos by a new divine initiative of re-creation, as God’s unique restored tree of life. The Cross of Christ crucified is the place from which God initiates the reordering of all things toward God. We see this newness emerge within the peace of the Cross, particularly in internal harmony of the New Adam.
In Christ crucified there is the new order of the human being turned toward God, in peace in himself, and in peace with all others. Even as we put him to death, the God-man is restoring true and profound peace to our human condition. Even in the midst of a world of violence, of profound inner disharmony, of disoriented love, and crass ignorance, the Christ in his wisdom and charity is present, reigning in majesty from the Cross.
This wisdom and charity are extended forth from the Cross to all others, to create anew from within, in the Church and through the sacraments, the conditions for true peace. We therefore now live in the cosmic aftermath of the once and for all of the Cross of peace, which provides the unique conditions for our redemption. We also live in the perpetual vitality of the Cross of peace: the Cross has changed all things, and the power and effectiveness of the Cross endures forever. True peace, then, is always available to us, if we wish to receive it and accept to have our lives transformed by it.
The contemplative vocation of the Cross in us, then, is a vocation to foster a peace that is comprehensive. It is a peace that can contain all things, comprehend all things, affect and transform all persons, and orient the whole of our lives in each occasion toward true union with the mystery of God.
This is true even, and especially, in a world in which the spiritual dynamics continue that originally led to the Cross: the untruth of the father of lies, the inner conflicts within all persons, the conflicts between human persons and nations, the moral betrayals that arise within the Church, the schismatic and heretical tendencies that assail her from within and the persecution, distrust and opposition that she is subject to from without, to say nothing of the myriad confusions and the moral obliviousness of the human race.
It is in this context, and especially in this context, that the peace of the Cross prevails, in which Jesus lives within his living members, giving them inner peace and external peace, one that heals the life of the Church and that can be communicated to others, from person to person, peace to peace, comprehensively.
Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. is Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (The Angelicum)