It overflows in a surplus of its peaceful fecundity
It is no surprise that Christ makes one of his rare appearances in The Divine Names under the aspect of peace. As Pseudo-Dionysius sees, the connection between Christ and peace is obvious—what’s lacking is our having learned to live within and according to this peace.
Now there is no need to tell of the loving-kindness of Christ, bathed as it is in peace. But we must learn from it to cease from strife within ourselves, against each other and against the angels. We must work together and with the angels to do the things of God, and we must do so in accordance with the Providence of Jesus “who works all things in all” [1 Cor. 12:6], making that Peace which is ineffable and was foreordained from eternity, reconciling us to himself and in himself to the Father.
Pseudo-Dionysius’s peace is a peace fundamentally about rest and unity: peace is the reconciliation of difference, the “undivided communion” of a multiplicity of forms. “The divine Peace is indivisible,” utterly one, yet always spilling out into all things and bringing them back into itself. But unity does not imply the elimination of difference; on the contrary, peace is the coming to rest of all things in the uniqueness proper to each. “Perfect Peace is there as a gift, guarding without confusing the individuality of each, providentially ensuring that all things are quiet and free of confusion within themselves and from without, that all things are unshakably what they are and that they have peace and rest.”
Politically? “Every civil war is changed into a unified household.” The end of strife between ourselves issues from being overtaken by the divine Peace that transposes our differences into majestic harmonies. But it is not merely passive: from a glimpse of the perfect peace of Christ we must learn the form of peace and participate in it. “With reverent hymns of peace we should now sing the praises of God’s peace [Eph. 2:14], for it is this which brings all things together.”
21 January 2007 |
tags: Denys, Peace
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