Why the Prince of Peace Divides Us

Christ is known as the Prince of Peace; as God the Son, through Whom “all things were made” (Nicene Creed), it is He alone who mediates true peace. And yet in this world we succumb to the wily tactics of the Great Deceiver, known as the “prince of this world.” The Bent One and his minions promise us “Peace! Peace!” when there is no peace; and the price tag if we capitulate is eternal. Satan could do no better than to confuse us into trading the Peace of Christ for the peace of this world. All he has to do is to convince us to conflate these two diametrically opposed notions of peace and encourage us to fight it out for a compromise. This diabolical plan has been working out very nicely for Lucifer in the modern age.

The Struggle For Souls

Christ Himself urged us to understand the difference between the false peace of the world and the true peace of the Kingdom in the Gospel:

“Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:51-53)

Christ is emphatic about the kind of division He brings with the Gospel message. It is for the sake of the Kingdom of God that this division will take place. Christ is promising us that He will divide us from our error, from those relationships grounded in the false peace of the world.

This division comes in the form of struggle known as the spiritual combat. The reason for the division is to draw our attention to the truth that this battle is the struggle for souls. To win this struggle, aided by grace, is to win over souls to the Kingdom for the sake of true peace and harmony in Heaven for all eternity. We are not to be content with temporary peace here on earth, but to struggle and strive for the peace that can only come to us when we are divided from our error and able to cooperate with the graces given by the Holy Spirit.

Because of our fallen natures, we have had the perennial tendency to invert the order of reality or to be susceptible to inversions of reality taught by a multitude of false teachers. The antidote to this tendency has always been Christ, conveyed by the Church Doctors and saints proclaiming the Gospel message and the true peace of the Kingdom. The enemy has garnered increasing sway among political, educational and media institutions throughout the world. Art, music and movies have joined the false peace movement, and it seems the only place on earth to learn about the nature of the true peace is Holy Mother Church.

The “Peace” Sign

Sadly, even within the Church there are many who would promote the false peace of the world by such movements as Liberation Theology and “social justice”. Liberation Theology is a material reduction of the kind of freedom Christ alludes to when he says that “the truth will make you free.” The false freedom offered by the devil is similar to the false peace offered by Liberation Theology; they are both inversions and therefore counterfeits of true freedom and true peace.

“Social justice” is a similar misnomer and the redundancy is a grammatical clue to its falsity. Justice is the single cardinal virtue that is social to begin with so adding social only belies its inverted error because, unlike Catholic Social Teaching, which instructs us on how to properly love God and neighbor, “social justice” would have us think about our rights and not about what is due to God and neighbor.

Our first task to recover the peace of the Kingdom is to recognize and distinguish the peace of the bent one from the peace of Christ, for they are diametrically opposed to one another. This is not so easily done because the false peace of Satan has become universally popular since the sexual revolution of the Sixties.

The late 1950s saw the emergence of the “universal peace sign” that was originally said to be a sign encouraging nuclear disarmament. However, it has been a prevalent sign of the leftist revolution ever since the 1960s. The symbol images an inverted life rune most likely signifying the death rune in ancient pagan German culture. It also signifies the broken cross, the very antithesis of Christ’s call to take up our crosses and follow Him (cf. Matthew 10:38, 16:24).  At the very least, this false sign is pretense for an impossible peace, a peace in the world of fallen man. In this world, the only “peace” possible is the appearance of peace by a temporary absence of conflict, surely to be replaced by multiplying violence and strife.

Worldly Peace and Tolerance

The peace of Christ is a peace of soul grounded in the belief in our eternal destiny in Heaven. Our hope is directed to the sole end of salvation at the end of our spiritual combat. The charity of Christ calls us all to love God first and neighbor second by helping to help as many souls as we can to enter the narrow gate. This is impossible with the false peace and tolerance of this world. Christ is emphatic: He came not to bring peace but to divide. He came to divide us from our vice, as contrary to Satan, who tries to divide us from our virtue.

We Catholics must take a stand against the false peace of the world. The Devil and those in his service propagate this false peace by the misuse of tolerance. Tolerance is not a great virtue and in fact it can be a great vice if we are asked by it to tolerate sin. The false peace of the world demands that we not just tolerate sin but promote it and approve of it. If we approve of illicit sexual behavior, immoral medical procedures, murder in the womb, and so many other prevalent vices, the bent one ensures we will receive approbation and accolades from our fellow man, and all may feel peaceful for a time.

We ought never to prize human respect, much less human respect at the expense of the respect from our Creator. The peace of the world is intolerant of virtue, intolerant of true Catholicism, true philosophy, and true peace; for the worldly, true peace is too costly because it is achieved only by the difficult and narrow path riddled with the thorns and thistles of this fallen world. Let us let Christ teach us the difference between His true peace and Satan’s imitation. Take the Catholic Stand and reject the false peace of the world.