July 28 Fri
God made us sowers of peace and joy. To all mankind we bring the "joy with peace" that Christ has promised us as part of the hundredfold – a joy whose roots are implanted in suffering, in the Cross; and a peace which is the peace of Christ, and which comes from our being identified with him.
Peace is a consequence of humility. It is the inner harmony that comes from the awareness of our own shortcomings as well as of God's gifts. Humble people are realistic in the interior struggle: they know they make mistakes, and admit them; they attribute to God alone the divine effectiveness of their labors.
“My daughters and sons, if you act in this way, how many obstacles will disappear! How many unpleasant moments we will avoid! If you ever have a hard time of it and you realize that your soul is filling with uneasiness, it is because you are clinging to yourselves. Our Lord came to redeem, to save, and he was not concerned about anything but that. Are we going to be concerned about fostering our pride?
“If you center your attention on yourself, you are not only taking a wrong road, but besides, you will lose Christian happiness in this life. You will lose that joy and cheerfulness which are nonetheless incomplete, because happiness will only be complete in heaven.” St Josemaría
Pride takes away peace because it makes us live in a false world, far from God. If someone imagines that he can achieve something alone, then the failure which he is bound to experience causes him to be uneasy, restless and anxious. Humility, on the other hand, leads us to God, and to his Son, Jesus Christ. And there we find peace.
The effort to acquire humility does not entail a brutal, tense, or anxiety-filled struggle; it means asking God to make us humble, and recognizing that in the concrete reality of our day we can do nothing by ourselves, but with God's help we can do all things.
Humility will keep us untroubled, in spite of our own mistakes and exterior difficulties. As St Josemaría wrote: “We all make mistakes, even in areas where we have been fighting for years and years. If our ascetical struggle disheartens us, then we are proud. We must be humble, and we must want to be faithful. It is true we are unworthy servants, but with those unworthy servants God can do great things in this world if we, on our part, do one thing: if we make the effort to stretch out our hand and take the hand which God, who offers us his grace from heaven.”
Only by relying on grace will we be at peace; only if we place our hope in God, and not in ourselves.