Of War and Peace in the Easter Season
- Jared Staudt
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Jesus’ first words to the disciples after his resurrection were “Peace be with you” (John 20:19). This was the fruit of Easter, resolving the two greatest threats to our peace — the internal discord of sin and the existential threat of death itself. Jesus came into the world for this very purpose as the Prince of Peace, of whom the angels spoke to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will” (Luke 2:14). Isaiah prophesied that when his reign arrived the wolf would dwell with the lamb and men would beat their swords into plowshares (see Isaiah chapters 11 and 2).
Yet, war remains on the earth. Many people have held this up as proof against the coming of the true Messiah. If we look more deeply, however, the peace of Christ has deeply impacted the world, and peace has come to those of good will throughout history.
Perhaps we see its fruit most fully in those who have walked the same paschal path of Jesus into death. The martyrs, more than anyone else, proclaim the Easter peace of triumph over death, one that disarms the enemy and proclaims the coming of God’s kingdom. Think, for instance, of the very first martyr, St. Stephen, who saw Christ seated at the right hand of the Father, and obtained the conversion of the chief persecutor of the Church, St. Paul, as the stones took away his life. The martyrs, by laying down their lives rather than taking up arms, overcame the Roman Empire, bringing her to faith through the power of their blood. And much later, the Vikings, who made many more martyrs for the Church, eventually laid down their arms and embraced the peace of Christ, so much so that some looked to their outpost in Iceland as an embodiment of the peace of the first community in Jerusalem (see Christopher Dawson’s account in Religion and the Rise of Western Culture). The wolf can truly lie down with the lamb, even if it strikes it first!
The Church bears a prophetic mission to proclaim peace. The prospect of the peace it proclaims is not one that arises from human calculation or energy. It’s not that the specter of war vanishes forever, but, with the coming of Christ, humanity may now address its threat with an even greater power. St. Augustine spoke of peace as the tranquility of order, which must be rooted first and foremost within the soul itself. Rightly ordered people are able to bring order into the world. We cannot simply say that the peace of Christ’s Resurrection remains transcendent. It may not be earthly in nature, yet Christians still live on earth and carry God’s supernatural gifts within them. They are meant to sanctify the world and enable it to share, even if only in limited ways, in the victory of Christ over sin and death. And the power of prayer has brought peace, even in living memory, as with the non-violent collapse of the Soviet Union.
Christian history nonetheless teaches us that peace sometimes requires conflict. John the Baptist, preaching repentance at the Jordan River, did not tell soldiers to abandon arms but simply “not to rob or defraud anyone” (Luke 3:14). Christians could take up arms but only in the cause of justice. Eventually, the Church would even sanction the knight, blessed after a night of solemn vigil, to protect the Church and the defenseless. We can think of glorious moments in defense of Christendom, such as Charles Martel turning back the Arab invaders of France outside of Tours in 732, or the miraculous victory of the Holy League at Lepanto in 1571. The soldier can embody the Easter victory of Christ through a selfless willingness to lay down his life in defense of others with the intention of giving glory to God.
That said, the Church’s priority must be to preach the peace of Christ. In every situation, we must seek the peace which only Christ can give. Even in cases of necessary self-defense, our attitude must not be one of reliance on the strength of man. Force alone cannot bring true peace, because it requires the tranquility of order that comes from above. The Church’s witness to peace has never embraced pacificism, however, because she recognizes that the civil authority wields the sword ultimately on behalf of God (Romans 13:4). If legitimate authority refuses to wield it, sinners become emboldened and only harm the good all the more.
How do we make sense of Jesus’s paschal peace in a world that remains marked by sin and conflict? The Church must proclaim Christ as the only lasting source of peace. He is the one who provides our true standard for judging what we must do. If it is to suffer evil, we do so trusting in his victory over sin and death. If it is to engage evil in combat for the good of others, we do so without hatred and respecting the dignity even of our enemies. From a Christian perspective, we do not allow economic expediency or political might to become ends in themselves; rather, we use them as means to pursue the common good and peace between nations. It can be a difficult balancing act to seek peace while remaining prepared to resist evil when necessary.
Even after Easter, the messiness of life remains. Even if there are no easy answers about when to tolerate evil or oppose it, a Christian discerns the right course of action through the help of rational prudence and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We can be sure of one thing: Jesus has turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6), upending earthly ways of thinking and acting. The prophetic witness of the Church should inspire us to boldness if we are truly confident that, as has happened many times in the Church’s history, swords can truly become plowshares.
