Nativity Letter Metropolitan Silouan
Peace that is Lost and Searched for
“I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Mt 10:34)
2015
In the feast of the Nativity of our Lord, we celebrate the realization of the prophecy that Isaiah proclaimed long ago: “For to us a child is born… His name will be called… Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Nevertheless, we all are searching for peace. We have lost it, but we seek it, sometimes, awkwardly.
In today´s world tribulations, I cannot help but recall the sense of peace and the means to achieve it that His Eminence, Metropolitan Paul of Aleppo, preached in his last (unpublished) homily on the feast of the Nativity in Aleppo in 2012, “Peace is the reality of what is sane. When it is disturbed by our sins, our interests, our erroneous religious practice, etc., then what is sane stops being, and peace is lost”.
His Eminence presented three ways to achieve peace that humanity has knownthroughout history. The first way is that of “violence”, waging wars and using weapons in order to resolve conflicts. In that way, there are no winners, since every war is won at the cost of human lives, whereas man´s life is more precious than any interest and any victory.
The second way is that of the formation of “alliances”, where the strongest defeats the weakest. These alliances cannot ensure peace, since peace disappears whenever these alliances vanish away.
The third way is the one announced by our Lord: “I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Mt 10:34). It is a word proclaimed by the “Prince of Peace” by which He indicates that peace is based on the “word of truth”, the “sword of the Spirit” (Eph 6:17), and not on the domination of alliances. Peace is, on the one hand, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22), and on the other hand, a gift of the Lord: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives” (Jn 14:27).
Metropolitan Paul concluded that true peace is the one based on the Christian virtues such as love, forgiveness, humility and selflessness. It is by practicing these virtues that we reach peace; “we cannot achieve it at the expense of others, because every human being is precious” in the eyes of God. Therefore, any dispute must not turn into a conflict, but should be a reason to start a dialogue with the aim of reaching the truth. We can reach the truth if we obey the Word of God, having it as our ultimate “court of appeal”, a word that guides us in life, and towards which we direct our neighbour.
Borrowing Metropolitan Paul’s approach to our reality is not solely to remind you of his living presence among us, since his abduction in Syria April 22, 2013, but also togive him the floor for two reasons, as he is one of the best to address us inthe conditions of distress and searching that we live in. On the one hand, he is one of the victims of the loss of peace, and on the other hand, he is an authentic and authorized spokesman on behalf of all his brothers who suffer the hell of the first way (violence) and those who are under the domination of the second way (alliances). Moreover, my real motivation is the hope that his words, as the light of this divine Star shown forth in the East, illuminate the dark cave of our reality, leading us in the third way, that of our reception of the “Prince of Peace”.
Although the newborn Child, “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12), seems to be defenseless, this apparent weakness changes nothing about our belief and our faith in the correctness of our choice of the third way. On the way to the cave of Bethlehem, we carry to the newborn Child, those gifts that we have cultivated in our hearts, those gifts that make us grow near to the heart of the Church and about which Saint John Chrysostom spoke, namely “knowledge, wisdom and love.” If we do not carry these gifts, peace will remain a mere wish, though holy, and never a living reality in our world.
Greeting you in the peace of the Child to be born in Bethlehem, we remain united in fervent prayer for our peace and that of the whole world.
† Metropolitan Silouan
Archbishop of Buenos Aires and all Argentina