How to be channels of God’s peace

Make me a channel of your peace. I think when we sing the words of this beautiful prayer attributed to St Francis of Assisi, we do not realise what we are asking of ourselves.

Where there is hatred, let me bring love. We ask that we be love and that we be peace. Then we will be able to bring peace where there is hatred.

Peace is the opposite of violence. So, to be an instrument of peace means to be non-violent ourselves and to use non-violent ways to bring about peace.

The Mahatma Gandhi is well known for his non-violent approach to bringing justice and peace to the world. His philosophy was that for our own peace-making efforts to be successful , we must remain non-violent. He said: My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising him.

That is far easier said than done and it implies the following:

Whenever there is a conflict in our homes, organisations or churches, our actions towards peace-building must be rooted in the power of love and the power of truth. This peace-building action of ours should be for the purpose of making God’s power of love known, not for making ourselves known.

Our motivation must always be to open people to the truth and not to show ourselves as right and them as wrong. This is most probably the most difficult part, because when there is conflict, we want to point out how wrong our opponents are. To shame them. To defeat and humiliate them. To publicly declare how wrong they are, how bad they are. Those are all violent ways of bringing about peace.

Non-violent ways of peace-building would include sitting down in a spirit of peace and listening to each other. Trying to understand our opponent. What are their fears? What are their needs? Trying to understand ourselves. What is my fear? What is my need? Being compassionate towards their needs and assertive with our own. Using non-violence is a slow process.

It is not instant, so to be able to use non-violent methods of building peace, we need patience and endurance. We need to be patient with ourselves and patient with others.

We are already assured of the victory of God over death. When we apply non-violent ways of peace-building we are simply revealing this fact. We must demonstrate that we live in this hope. That we live with this trust. We must never forget that there is a God. And he rules over all the earth.

And so we can gladly sing:

Make me a channel of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me bring Your love, Where there is injury, Your pardon Lord,

And where there’s doubt, true faith in You

Make me a channel of your peace, Where there’s despair in life let me bring hope,

Where there is darkness only light, And where there’s sadness, ever joy

Oh Master, grant that I may never seek, So much to be consoled as to console,

To be understood, as to understand, To be loved, as to love with all my soul

Make me a channel of your peace, It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

In giving to all men that we receive, And in dying that we’re born to eternal life.