Interior Peace, a Critical Capability

The theories of Carl Von Clausewitz, former Prussian General Officer, on military strategy are used today by many of the world’s leading military powers. Clausewitz stated that military operations are supported by critical capabilities. A critical capability is “a means that is considered a crucial enabler for a center of gravity to function . . . and is essential to the accomplishment of the specified or assumed objective.”¹ To draw a parallel to Clausewitz’s military strategy in the spiritual life, we could call our “center of gravity” Christ’s grace, with our “objective” being heaven. Is, then, interior peace a critical capability that would enable the grace needed for a successful pilgrimage towards heaven?²

Fathers Jacques Philippe and Ambroise de Lombez highlight the necessary role of interior peace for receiving and growing in grace. As an overview of a profound subject, this article will review the following reflections on interior peace from Philippe’s book Recherche la Paix et poursuis-là (Searching for and maintaining peace), and Lombez’s book Traité de la Paix intérieure (Treatise on Interior Peace). I will highlight evidence which points to interior peace as being a critical capability for our pilgrimage on earth. Though there are many dynamics to interior peace, I will only focus on the following four themes:

• Why is interior peace, or peace of the heart, critical?
• What are some of the enemies and challenges to this peace?
• Confidence in Providence and abandoning oneself
• Important ingredients of moderation and patience

Why is interior peace, or peace of the heart, critical?

Both Philippe and Lombez impress upon the reader that God works in us through peace. Philippe comments that it is only through peace that God can talk and operate, whereas Lombez notes that without peace we can gain very little in the way of grace.³ The greater the peace in our hearts, the greater our disposition to God’s grace. It is also through interior peace that we comprehend God’s movements within us, in order to discern God’s direction for us. One could call interior peace the prerequisite launching point for operations of grace as we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Eph 2:10 NRSVCE).⁴ Like all grace, this peace is also a divine gift which we are free to accept or decline.

“The heart is always the master inside of us.”⁵ It is extremely challenging to be fully alive and to live Christ’s greatest commandment unless we have a steady state of peace in our hearts. Without interior peace we begin to collapse upon ourselves, lose our composure, and cannot see outside our world of suffering or selfish desires — we become disintegrated. As we become focused on ourselves, essential communication with God and neighbor becomes scrambled, disjointed, and eventually cut.

Philippe offers a sublime image to his reader demonstrating the difference between a soul in peace and one in agitation:

Consider the surface of a lake upon which the sun shines. If the surface of the lake is peaceful and tranquil, the sun will be almost perfectly reflected in the lake, and even more perfectly as this lake is more peaceful. On the contrary, if the surface of the water is agitated, moving, the image of the sun will not be reflected. It is similar to our soul vis-à-vis God.⁶

In sum, the state of our interior peace determines the intensity with which we reflect God.

Arguably, one of the most prominent themes and words Jesus uses in the Bible is “peace.” Approaching the Apostles at key moments, where they are challenged and anxious, Jesus’s first words are those of peace (e.g., Jn 14:27; Jn 16:33; Mk 4:36–40; Mt 6:25–27). The appearance of Jesus in the storm on the lake, or his visit to the Apostles under lock and key after the Resurrection, are two vivid biblical accounts where Jesus exhibits he is the Master who brings peace and operates through it. He also left his Church with an abundance of this peace, in particular, through his priests and the sacraments. It is after receiving Christ’s gift of the sacrament of confession that we hear a priest say, “Your sins are forgiven. Go in peace.” At the end of Mass in francophone countries, the final words from a priest’s mouth are, “Go in the peace of Christ.” 

What are some of the enemies and challenges to this peace?

Drawing battle lines: Demons, attachments, and the world

The veritable battleground is the heart and the stakes are high. The more we safeguard our hearts from raging emotions, attachments, sin, anxiety, and outright panic, the more we control (with God’s grace) the battle against a multitude of personal shortcomings and demons who target our critical capability — our peace, and consequently our capacity to love. In his book Diary of an American Exorcist, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti highlights the presence of demons when our feelings escalate into panic.

Both Philippe and Lombez underline the importance of letting God fight for us (see Ex 14:14) while we strive to maintain our calm in the smoke of battle. The demons, being superior to us in intelligence, will seek to dupe us and fight on their terms. Philippe highlights that one of the “secrets” to spiritual combat is “not to mistake the fight, to be able to discern despite the ruse of the adversary what is the true battleground . . . where we need to apply our efforts.”⁷ Like Philippe, Lombez employs metaphors of combat to demonstrate the demons’ wiles: “He [the devil] attacks you in your heart, as one sometimes attacks an enemy in a fortress, not by forcing you, but by attracting you to come outside of your defenses, to more easily crush you in a campaign of complete destruction.”⁸ The ultimate “victory” for the demons is to rob us of our peace, battle after battle, until we are beleaguered and lose our confidence in God.

Detachment is also a prominent theme in the writings of these two spiritual masters. The heart is oftentimes held captive by attachments — either tangible or intangible — which impede God from working in us. Lombez has multiple chapters dedicated to detachment, stressing its significance for peace in the heart and for allowing God to go to work in us. God will not be content with only part of our heart! Lombez affirms, “One must especially liberate himself from all attachments, including the smallest ones. A shared heart will never have peace. The jealousy of God, which will chase and purify us, will incessantly trouble us . . .”⁹ Philippe mentions that the demons make use of attachments to “trouble” and “discourage” us with ideas that we will be left in wanting of something we consider important. He goes on to emphasize that this is a lie and reassures us of God’s fidelity in everything, citing Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.”¹⁰

The world continues to invent and to offer us ways to disintegrate our being. In spiritual physics, being “whole” or “integrated” signals a coherent heart which is at peace. A heart in peace is capable of constructing sincere rapport with others; unity can take root. Consequently, our spiritual authors would likely conclude that to fully participate in the Body of Christ, we need to sustain heightened levels of interior peace. However, the world offers us everything to the contrary. Today’s atmosphere of noise, screens, self-indulgence, and immediate gratification are only some of the plagues which distract and disintegrate us over time — the existential threats to the Church Militant are clear. Speaking on holy silence, Father Basil Nortz interestingly comments that “noise is always the enemy of God . . . Noise is a product of hell and produces children for hell.”¹¹ Avoiding and combatting the counterfeit enticements of worldly peace and happiness are a daily effort for most believers.

A disciplined life of prayer, the sacraments, fraternity, and asceticism are key to maintaining interior peace and staying close to Christ. We have the choice to fight or to reconcile at some level with the world and the demons. If we fight, we gain access to heaven, deploying the Kingdom of God within us. If we reconcile and cede ground to our enemies, we jeopardize our salvation, permitting the forces of darkness to penetrate within us. We take flight and become dispersed. Saint Paul offers us a word of encouragement, or caution: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (1Cor 3:16–17). Lombez echoes Paul, “The Kingdom of God is inside each one of us: what more do you want?”¹²

Confidence in Providence and abandoning oneself

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). Philippe begins his treatise on interior peace with emphasizing that all the good we can do is from God alone.¹³ Lombez opens his discourse on interior peace by highlighting Psalm 75, “And his place is in peace” (DRA), while stating that our heart is a throne for God, albeit an unstable one.¹⁴ Throughout their writings, the spiritual authors continuously demonstrate the fragility of man and his required reliance on God in order to obtain peace.

Making the leap from our comfort zone into Providence is a challenge for everyone. There are heroic acts, but more importantly there are the small daily acts of abandonment which develop our confidence in Providence. This confidence fosters one’s interior peace. As the confidence grows, so does the peace of heart, as Lombez states:

The love of God produces the submission of our will to all the dispositions of his Providence, and this submission conserves us in a holy tranquility among the most difficult setbacks, as well as in an admirable equilibrium in the midst of large shifts and cruel vicissitudes of this life . . . What happiness for man to unite himself to this sovereign Providence which conserves, which governs, which arranges everything, to want all that Providence wants and to want nothing more!¹⁵

When people inquire as to what to do when they fail in abandoning themselves to Providence, Philippe cites the French mystic Marthe Robin who would quip, “Abandon yourself anyway!” as well as Saint Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus who would say, “Total abandon, this is my only law!”¹⁶ The message is clear: be persistent, do not give up. God’s graces are conditioned by the intensity of our confidence in his Providence, a theme these spiritual writers treat throughout their work. The more we abandon ourselves to his Providence, the more he acts on our behalf, the more we find interior peace as a son or daughter of God. Citing Saint François de Sales, Philippe underscores, “We can measure divine Providence working in us by the confidence we have in it.”¹⁷

Important ingredients: moderation and patience

Absent of a direct infusion of grace, interior peace is something we mature into over time through cooperating with grace and cultivating virtuous habits. This can be frustrating, particularly for those of us in western culture who often have desires and expectations of peace in short order. There is no “on demand” or “express service” for achieving peace and abandonment to God. Discouragement can come easily as we must swim against the currents of this world, wrestle with our fallen nature, and be ever vigilant against a prowling enemy. In this regard, both Philippe and Lombez highlight the requirement for moderation and patience in the spiritual life. Our conformity to Christ’s heart is a process, as the Lord indicates in the following passage from Zechariah, “And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God’” (Zech 13:9).

In analyzing our desire to progress in holiness, or to lead others to holiness, Philippe cautions how we are to proceed:

We must . . . not only verify that what we want is good in and of itself but also our manner of desiring it, that the disposition of our heart in which we desire it is good. That is to say, that our desire must always be tender, peaceful, patient, detached, abandoned to God. And not an impatient, pressing, anxious, irritated desire . . . We want our holy desires in a manner that is not yet in “God’s manner,” that is to say, in the Holy Spirit, the spirit that is tender, peaceful, patient, whereas the human manner is tension, stress, discouragement if one does not immediately accomplish what one sets out to do.¹⁸

Lombez treats the importance of moderation in several chapters and incorporates lessons learned from François de Sales as well as the Imitation of Christ. Safeguarding the heart from intrusive and unholy desires is essential to maintaining peace. Testing thoughts and desires over time is our duty. How do we accomplish this? Lombez advises,

One must observe desires closely once they begin to form in us, and not to let them grow except by degrees. If they are good, they can be strengthened and rooted in the heart; and submissive from their birth . . . if they are bad desires, we can reject them without effort and trouble, and save ourselves from their consequences . . .¹⁹

Lombez goes on to say, citing an image from the spiritual classic Combat Spiritual, that we are to place a guard at the door of our heart to stop and scrutinize desires. As a guard is posted at the city gates to verify those who wish to enter, so should the guard of our heart verify the desires and thoughts to determine from where they come.²⁰

Canadian Catholic priest and YouTube personality for the Faith Father Mark Goring recently referred to Philippe’s books in a sermon. Goring highlighted for his parish the leitmotif of “little by little” in Philippe’s writings.²¹ Goring also emphasized that we need to have patience with ourselves in our walk toward holiness. Patience with oneself and others is a prominent theme with both spiritual authors, as the threat of discouragement is a persistent danger.²² Saint Teresa of Avila would say, “Patience obtains everything.”

Conclusion

One’s heart is like a battlefield where one fights to maintain peace. Both Philippe and Lombez wrote and discussed extensively the significant stakes of our struggle for interior peace. It is a critical capability — as defined by Clausewitz — because without it we are quickly victims of external forces and our own shortcomings. Without it, we risk losing our way to heaven and suffering tragic defeat.

One can also stress the value of peace from a negative and extreme approach, as there are experiences on this earth where we witness the catastrophic effects of an absence of tranquility. War is a primary example of a lack of peace, or experiencing hell on earth. From combat in Afghanistan to serving in the high-threat areas of the Sahel, Bosnia, and Kosovo, I can testify that war disintegrates society and man on many levels. Demons are hyper-active in war — anything goes, and the consequences are enduring for years, if not for a lifetime or multiple generations. Suicides of U.S. military members alone are a daily (or near daily) dilemma for the U.S. military, due to the decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Deaths from suicide linked to the decade of war are now four times higher than the deaths from the actual combat.²³ I have counseled and cared for soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and what they all have in common is an extreme lack of interior peace. They often cannot sleep and abuse their bodies with alcohol or drugs to find relief from the scars of combat. War is the polar opposite of peace. The stakes are high.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov would say, “Acquire interior peace, and a multitude around you will find their salvation.”²⁴ The new evangelization requires warriors for Christ who possess unmovable peace and have firm confidence in God. Someone who has deep interior peace impresses us; we are not left indifferent by such a soul. This person motivates and inspires us through his presence. The contrary is true about people who lack peace — they can disrupt our tranquility and drain us with negative energy. Many people in the world today are weary and shell-shocked from a lack of peace. They are disoriented, thirsty for Truth, and hungry for interior calm.

Responding from a pastoral and evangelical point of view, there is a pressing call to bring souls to meet Christ in a heart-to-heart relationship. Where Christ deploys his grace, his peace reigns. However, we must have Christ’s peace within ourselves before we can give it to others, as Seraphim of Sarov reminds us. Daily prayer, the sacraments, asceticism, and fraternity are vital to cultivating this peace and winning the good fight.

As I finish this article on the 11th of November, which is Veteran’s Day in the U.S., Armistice in France, and the feast of Saint Martin de Tours in the Church, many thoughts and prayers come to mind. As a long-serving and seasoned Roman soldier, Martin likely comprehended the various nuances of war and peace. Those nuances, in many ways, still exist. He was appreciated for his natural, as well as supernatural, gifts as a priest and bishop. His zeal for holiness allowed him to evangelize Europe to the point where there are now over 400 villages in France alone that carry his name — far more than any other saint, even Michael the archangel. May he intercede for those of us in the fight to keep peace in our hearts, for those who have little peace and find themselves in war, as well as for all the fallen soldiers in purgatory.