The Daily Pearl
On Peace
A pearl kept from the brand’s mornings: a verse to hold, a prayer to say and a word to carry.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
John 14 : 27
A Prayer for This Morning
Lord, the peace you give is not the world's, and I confess I keep trying to buy the world's kind. Quiet the trouble you told my heart not to keep. Leave your peace with me today, and teach me not to set it down.
Affirmation
I hold a peace the world did not give me, and the world cannot take it away.
The Reflection
These words were spoken on the worst night of all, hours before the arrest. Peace I leave with you is not the sentiment of a calm season; it is a bequest, made by a man who knew exactly what the morning held. Which means the peace on offer has already been tested in darker weather than ours.
The world's peace is circumstantial: it lasts precisely as long as the circumstances do. Not as the world giveth, he says, and the difference is structural. His peace is not the absence of trouble but a presence within it, the way a keel does not flatten the sea yet holds the vessel true. Let not your heart be troubled is not a scolding. It is permission.
In Her Company
St Rita of Cascia
She made peace where a family feud had promised generations of grief, then gave her remaining years to prayer. Impossible reconciliations are still entrusted to her.
Rita of Cascia (1381 to 1457) was married young into a violent feud in Umbria. Widowed, and having lost her two sons, she forgave her husband's killers and helped broker peace between the families before entering the Augustinian convent at Cascia. She is invoked for impossible causes, and roses are blessed on her feast.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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