Inner Peace - Forget the New Age Psycho-babble
From Denis the Carthusian's Commentary on Luke
The way to attain the perfection of divine love is thus stated. Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? In other words: Do not imagine that I have come to offer people a sensual, worldly, and unruly peace that will enable them to be united in their vices and achieve earthly prosperity. No, I tell you, I have not come to offer that kind of peace, but rather division — a good, healthy kind of division, physical as well as spiritual. Love for God and desire for inner peace will set those who believe in me at odds with wicked men and women, and make them part company with those who would turn them from their course of spiritual progress and from the purity of divine love, or who attempt to hinder them.
Good, interior, spiritual peace consists in the repose of the mind in God, and in a rightly ordered harmony. To bestow this peace was the chief reason for Christ's coming. This inner peace flows from love. It is an unassailable joy of the mind in God, and it is called peace of heart. It is the beginning and a kind of foretaste of the peace of the saints in heaven — the peace of eternity.
Denis was a mystic and theologian of the 15th century. Despite being a Carthusian, he was a prolific scholar and writer on liturgy, morality, philosophy, scripture, spirituality, and theology. He also wrote works on Christian living for clergy and laity of every rank and profession, and at the request of Nicholas of Cusa, a treatise against Mohammedanism. Notably he upheld the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in two treatises on the Blessed Virgin Mary. He is considered the last great Scholastic writer.
The way to attain the perfection of divine love is thus stated. Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? In other words: Do not imagine that I have come to offer people a sensual, worldly, and unruly peace that will enable them to be united in their vices and achieve earthly prosperity. No, I tell you, I have not come to offer that kind of peace, but rather division — a good, healthy kind of division, physical as well as spiritual. Love for God and desire for inner peace will set those who believe in me at odds with wicked men and women, and make them part company with those who would turn them from their course of spiritual progress and from the purity of divine love, or who attempt to hinder them.
Good, interior, spiritual peace consists in the repose of the mind in God, and in a rightly ordered harmony. To bestow this peace was the chief reason for Christ's coming. This inner peace flows from love. It is an unassailable joy of the mind in God, and it is called peace of heart. It is the beginning and a kind of foretaste of the peace of the saints in heaven — the peace of eternity.
Denis was a mystic and theologian of the 15th century. Despite being a Carthusian, he was a prolific scholar and writer on liturgy, morality, philosophy, scripture, spirituality, and theology. He also wrote works on Christian living for clergy and laity of every rank and profession, and at the request of Nicholas of Cusa, a treatise against Mohammedanism. Notably he upheld the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in two treatises on the Blessed Virgin Mary. He is considered the last great Scholastic writer.
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