Jacques Philippe - Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart

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Originally published in French by Editions des Batitudes,
Socit des Oeuvres Communautaires under the title
Recherche la paix et poursuis-la.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Philippe, Jacques.

[Recherche la paix et poursuis-la. English]

Searching for and maintaining peace: a small treatise on peace of heart / Jacques Philippe; translated by George and Jannic Driscoll.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-81891-527-7

1. Christian lifeCatholic authors. 2. Peace of mindReligious aspectsCatholic Church. I. Title.

BX2350.3 .P48 2002

248.8'6dc21

2001046073

_________________________________________________________

Produced and designed in the United States of America by the
Fathers and Brothers of the Society of St. Paul,
2187 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island, New York 10314-6603,
as part of their communications apostolate.

_________________________________________________________

Copyright 2002 by the Society of St. Paul

_________________________________________________________

Printing Information:

_________________________________________________________

Current Printing - first digit 10 11 12 13

_________________________________________________________

Year of Current Printing - first year shown

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

_________________________________________________________

Alba
House

Originally published in French by Editions des Batitudes,
Socit des Oeuvres Communautaires under the title
Recherche la paix et poursuis-la .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Philippe, Jacques.

[Recherche la paix et poursuis-la. English]

Searching for and maintaining peace: a small treatise on peace of heart / Jacques Philippe; translated by George and Jannic Driscoll.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-81891-527-7

1. Christian lifeCatholic authors. 2. Peace of mindReligious aspectsCatholic Church. I. Title.

BX2350.3 .P48 2002

248.8'6dc21

2001046073

_________________________________________________________

Produced and designed in the United States of America by the
Fathers and Brothers of the Society of St. Paul,
2187 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island, New York 10314-6603,
as part of their communications apostolate.

_________________________________________________________

Copyright 2002 by the Society of St. Paul

_________________________________________________________

Printing Information:

_________________________________________________________

Current Printing - first digit 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

_________________________________________________________

Year of Current Printing - first year shown

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

_________________________________________________________

Table of Contents

Part One:
Interior Peace, The Road To Saintliness

Part Two: How To React To That
Which Causes Us To Lose Peace

Part Three:
What The Saints Tell Us

May the peace of Christ reign in your hearts.

(Colossians 3:15)

Experience will show you that peace,

Which fills your soul with charity,

The love of God and of your neighbor,

Is the road that leads directly to eternal life.

(Juan de Bonilla)

Our day and age is one of agitation and inquietude. This tendency, evident in the daily life of our contemporaries, also manifests itself frequently in the domain of Christian and spiritual life. Our search for God, for saintliness, and our efforts to love and serve our neighbors are also frequently fraught with agitation and anxiety instead of being full of confidence and peace, as they should be if we were to find ourselves imbued with the attitude of small children, as the Gospels command us.

However, it is essential for us to come to understand that the way to God and the perfection that is demanded of us is shorter and more efficacious, markedly easier too, when one has learned, little by little, how to conserve, in all circumstances, a profound peace of heart. Because then the heart allows itself to be driven by the Holy Spirit and God is able to do more with it by His grace than the heart could do by its own efforts.

Here then is what we hope to make understood by the considerations presented in the first part of this book. We then review a number of situations in which we frequently find ourselves and try to explain how to confront them in light of the Gospels so as to conserve an interior peace. In the tradition of the Church, this teaching is often addressed by spiritual masters. The third part of the book presents a selection of texts by authors of various ages, who represent and illustrate the different themes that will be alluded to.

Interior Peace,
The Road To Saintliness

In order to understand how fundamental it is for the development of the Christian life to strive to acquire and maintain peace of heart, the first thing of which we must be convinced is that all the good that we can do comes from God and from Him alone: Apart from Me, you can do nothing, Jesus said (John 15:5). He did not say, you cant do much, but, you can do nothing. It is essential that we be persuaded of this truth. We often have to experience failures, trials and humiliations, permitted by God, before this truth imposes itself on us, not only on an intellectual level, but as an experience of our entire being. God would spare us, if He could, all these trials, but they are necessary in order that we should be convinced of our complete powerlessness to do good by ourselves. According to the testimony of all the saints, it is indispensable for us to acquire this knowledge. It is, in effect, a necessary prelude to all the great things that God will do in us by the power of His grace. This is why St. Thrse of Lisieux, the Little Flower, would say that the best thing that God could have done in her soul was to have shown her her smallness, her powerlessness.

If we take seriously the words cited above from the Gospel of St. John, then we understand that the fundamental problem of our spiritual life becomes this. How can I let Jesus act in me? How can I permit the grace of God to freely operate in my life?

That at which we should aim is, then, not principally to impose a lot of things on ourselves, as good as they may seem with our own intelligence, according to our projects, etc. Rather, we must try to discover the disposition of our soul, the profound attitude of our heart and the spiritual conditions that permit God to act in us. It is only thus that we can bear fruit fruit that will last (John 15:16).

To the question, What must we do in order to let the grace of God act freely in our lives?, there is no unequivocal answer, no master key. In order to respond to this question completely, it would be necessary to do an entire treatise of the Christian life in which one would speak of prayer (principally of meditation, which is so fundamental in this regard), of the sacraments, of the purification of our hearts, of docility to the Holy Spirit, and so forth, and of all the ways in which the grace of God could further penetrate us.