Advice on Peacemaking from the Saints

Remembrance of wrongs is the consummation of anger, the keeper of sin, hatred of righteousness, ruin of virtues, poison of the soul, worm of the mind, shame of prayer... You will know that you have completely freed yourself of this rot, not when you pray for the person who has offended you, not when you exchange presents with him, not when you invite him to your table, but only when, on hearing that he has fallen into bodily or spiritual misfortune, you suffer and weep for him as for yourself.

- St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." Who are these? Those who imitate the Divine love of others, who show forth in their own life the characteristic of the Divine energy. The Lord and Giver of good things completely annihilates anything that is without affinity and foreign to goodness. This work He ordains also for you, namely to cast out hatred and abolish war, to exterminate envy and banish strife, to take away hypocrisy and extinguish from within resentment of injuries smoldering in the heart. Instead, you ought to introduce whatever is contrary to the things that have been removed. For as light follows the departure of darkness, thus also these evil things are replaced by the fruits of the Spirit: by charity, joy, peace, benignity, magnanimity, all the good things enumerated by the Apostle (Gal 5:22). How then should the dispenser of the Divine gifts not be blessed, since he imitates the gifts of God and models his own good deeds on the Divine generosity? But perhaps the Beatitude does not only regard the good of others. I think that man is called a peacemaker par excellence who pacifies perfectly the discord between flesh and spirit in himself and the war that is inherent in nature, so that the law of the body no longer wars against the law of the mind but is subjected to the higher rule and becomes a servant of the Divine ordinance.

- St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes

"But I say to you," the Lord says, "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you." Why did he command these things? So that he might free you from hatred, sadness, anger and grudges, and might grant you the greatest possession of all, perfect love, which is impossible to possess except by the one who loves all equally in imitation of God.

- St. Maximus the Confessor

I have heard that there were two old men who dwelt together for many years, and who never quarreled, and that one said to the other, "let us also pick a quarrel with each other, even as other men do." Then his companion answered and said unto him, "I know not how a quarrel cometh," and the other old man answered and said unto him, "Behold, I will set a brick in the midst, and will say, 'This is mine,' and do thou say, 'It is not thine, but mine'; and from this quarreling will ensue." And they placed a brick in the midst, and one of then said, "This is mine," and his companion answered and said after him, "This is not so, for it is mine"; and straightaway the other replied and said unto him, "If this be so, and the brick be thine, take it and go." Thus they were not able to make a quarrel.

- Sayings of the Desert Fathers

In Communion / issue 42 / Summer 2006