Peace has been a perennial dream of humanity throughout history. After the bloodshed of the twentieth century, it was even clearer that it is a necessity for the future survival of civilization.
The wave of enthusiasm that swept over the Western world in the 60s and 70s among youth who were crying out for “peace and not war” was met, however, with new expressions of violence and the rise of terrorism. In many respects, society has only grown further fragmented and increasingly more polarized in the intervening decades.
Nonetheless, the desire for peace remains. The world has sought to build peace through tolerance and its own efforts to construct the utopian dream that lives as an echo in our hearts.
There is a sense that some reality binds us together in a kind of common brotherhood, and a call to authentic communion with one another. But the question remains: What can bridge the ever-growing social chasm and tensions?
Where is the peace we long for? Or is peace merely the wishful thinking of youthful idealism, a mirage in the desert of reality?
Is there a place where one can see and encounter this longed-for peace?
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”
John 14:27
If one desires an icon of the violent divisions that can exist in the world, Nicaragua in the 1980s provides a potent image. A country decimated by civil war, brothers killing brothers, and most often without fully understanding why.
Decades later, as I served in Nicaragua as a missionary priest and could see the wounds of the war that still afflicted the people, I learned that a miracle had occurred during those bloody years. It was a miracle that no one could have anticipated or even believed possible.
In the mountainous north where the fiercest battles were fought, on May 3, 1988, a Franciscan priest, Fray Odorico, celebrated Mass in the Valle de la Naranja (valley of the oranges). He invited to the Mass the soldiers of both the Contras and the Sandinistas.
As the Mass began in the open air upon an improvised altar, the two groups stood almost a football field apart on either side of the valley. Fray Odorico called the two groups to come nearer and sit in their respective groups to his right and his left on either side of an imaginary aisle down the center of the two groups.
The heaviness and tension on the faces of the soldiers weighed upon the atmosphere, but Fray Odorico celebrated the Mass as normal until following the consecration, he paused at the sign of peace, looking out into the faces of these two groups of enemies. What he saw and what he did next, however, reflected the reality of what God saw, what God sees, when he looks upon us.
“Flowing out from this Mystery is the power to do what we on our own are incapable of doing—seeing the other and recognizing my ‘brother’ and my ‘sister’.”
At that moment, Fr. Odorico walked down to the soldiers and, taking the hand of a Contra and a Sandinista, he brought them together and said words that we have heard a thousand times in Mass, “Let us offer each other the sign of peace.”
The two men shook hands and then drew each other together into an embrace as tears began to stream down their faces.
Following this, the other soldiers began one by one to cross over to the “other side” and extend to each other the sign of peace… the peace that they longed so desperately to find, the peace that we all desire.
The place where this peace awaits is in fact in the place where God awaits us: the Eucharist, Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity made present to us. Flowing out from this Mystery is the power to do what we on our own are incapable of doing—seeing the other and recognizing in the other my “brother” and my “sister,” no matter who they vote for, what color their skin may be, what language they speak, or even what football team they root for (Go Dawgs!).
In the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, we receive the greatest reconciliation possible, the healing of the separation between God and humanity due to sin. And because of our unity with Jesus’ Heart, the Heart of the Son of God, we are able to pray the words that he taught us, “Our Father.”
In the Mass at La Naranja, all the soldiers prayed as one to their Father. At that moment, you couldn’t distinguish Contra from Sandinista because they were intermingled. The “aisle” had disappeared after the sign of peace.
In my recent years serving in Nicaragua, one of the only places that I found the political factions of Nicaragua seated side by side was at Mass. This is the place where peace is possible. This is the place where peace is not a mere dream: in the communion of Christ’s Body gathered as one in his Eucharistic Presence.
Peace is the fruit of Christ’s presence in our midst.
If you are longing for peace and desire to see it, go to Mass this Sunday and sit next to the person in your parish whom perhaps you struggle to love. Look them in the eye and say to them, “Peace be with you.”
