Fr. Michael Williams

‘I saw the Spirit coming down upon Him from Heaven like a dove and resting on Him’.

The dove today is often seen as a symbol of peace. The self proclaimed pacifist Pablo Picasso painted many of them! But well before Picasso took up this theme in his artwork, the Sacred Scriptures have portrayed the dove as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and peace is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

The dove, representing the Holy Spirit in today’s gospel, comes down from Heaven. This is entirely appropriate because the Spirit of Peace belongs to the realm of God. In God and in heaven there is total peace. There is no disturbance whatsoever in God or in His realm of Heaven. That’s something to look forward to!

But as believers in the God of peace, we are called to bring that quality of Heaven to earth. The first place that we have to establish peace on earth is in our own hearts. We have to ask ourselves do we have peace in our own hearts or are they full of disturbance? If the latter is true, then the way to peacefulness of heart, is a deeper relationship with the Prince of Peace, ‘who will guide us into the way of peace’.

There can be no peace without God as God is peace and tranquility.

St James says that the lack of peace in our world, comes from the lack of peace in human hearts; he says wars start in human hearts.

People often say today religion starts wars- no it doesn’t- a minority of people who profess to be religious- can start wars and terrorism. Although we also know that regimes where God and religion were banned or ridiculed (Soviet Empire, Khimer Rouge, Nazi Germany) were anything but peaceable.

But religion practiced as it should be brings harmony and peace. And the Lord wants our religion and faith to be a conduit to bring His peace to this peaceless world. When Our Lady appeared at Fatima in 1917, at the height of the FWW, she told the world to pray and make sacrifices so that peace would come to the world. The following year the war ended!

First of all we need peace to reign in our own hearts, then our families, then our communities, then our world. It’s an ongoing project, with setbacks along the way. But if we look at Jesus, the Man of peace, we see that violence was perpetrated against Him, yet He remained in a state of peace personally. We only need to think of Jesus on the Cross and His reaction to see that: ‘Father, Forgive them, they do not know what they are doing’.

We need to imitate Him. It’s very hard! But the saints managed to imitate him, and so must we if we want peace in our hearts and in our families and in our world.