Thursday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.”
These words from Christ in the Gospel passage today can be potentially confusing or even feel self-contradictory. After all, wasn’t the mission of Christ about salvation and the promotion of peace, love, and unity with God and others? To understand the situation properly, we must first look at what real peace really entails. Peace is not merely the absence of conflict. Real, authentic peace requires a positive state of harmony among members who have a unified idea of human flourishing. Real peace requires that people have a shared vision of human purpose and human dignity.
To be clear, Christ is not saying that He desires division. Rather, his statement in this instance is a prophetic one. He knows that his life and teachings will result in division because there are many people who simply will not choose to prioritize authentic love and service of God and others above all. Without shared vision of the importance of relationship in and with God, there can be no shared understanding of the purpose of human life. The concepts of human purpose, value, and dignity are not something that we invented or voted on. These things are objectively rooted in our nature as created beings.
Without this shared understanding of the purpose of human life, there can be no mutual understanding of human dignity. And without mutual understanding of inviolable human dignity, there can never be any authentic, lasting peace in which persons can reach the full potential of flourishing that God desires for us.