Daily Signet
It is Christmas time and the “Peace on Earth…” quotations are all around us. But what was meant by the original? What is truly meant by Jesus whose birth this quotation celebrated when he said later, “I am come not to send Peace, but War?” or as stated in the King James, “I came not to send Peace, but a Sword.”
We are so afraid of wars that kill bodies (the only wars we really oppose) and overlook or even applaud those wars against minds, against minds of the heart and even against souls—against the spirit. All such wars dehumanize us far more than wars that kill bodies (in these we often become more human). But in wars against the most human spirit, we are materialist at its worst. We fear the bullets that kill the body far more than we fear the sins of man that kill the spirit. Peace is not the absence of bullets.
…Peace must be in us and only in us before it can be built around us—before it can have any hope in our world.
What we are saying is simple and clear. Only the spiritual can live in peace.
Challenge, stress, even violence are necessary to material man. They purify him; they cleanse him and they strengthen him. Without them in this less than spiritual world, he becomes weak and he becomes polluted. Peace destroys him. Peace turns heroes into victims. Peace becomes the enemy…
What we are saying is so simple and so clear. Only the spiritual can live in peace.
Don’t declare peace. Become spiritual; then true peace will become the generated child born out of this spirit in the animal of you. It is as the Credo says.
Willam Boast
On This Day…
St. Francis Xavier: 16C Basque who met Ignatius Loyola while studying at the University of Paris and became one of the first seven men to take Jesuit vows. Spent a lifetime as missionary in the East
Joseph Conrad born 12-3-1857 in Ukraine: great novelist remembered for Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and The Shadow Line. Died 8-3-1924
Quotes: “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” “Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.” “Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to see through. Face it.”