Hermitage Note: 2021 ... Sowing and Cultivating Peace

The new year came in with a bang. It came in with a bang that will never be forgotten. It will not be forgotten by people in this country. It will not be forgotten by people around the world who watched as the horribly ugly scene unfolded. Our own media, replaying the video footage over and over ad infinitum, made sure that the images are embedded in our minds.

Spin doctors on both sides of the issue, skilled propagandists aimed at furthering their preferential ideologies, further complicate the issue.

It is sad. It is worse than sad.

What is even sadder is that there is truly no real end in sight where the diabolical mania is concerned. Satan is having an absolute heyday.

Scientists can come up with vaccines that are supposed to be effective against the virus. It would be great if they could come up with a vaccine that would remedy the passions of anger, hatred, and fear that are so dominantly rampant and raging around us. They will never discover a vaccine to remedy the natural fruit of the Great Transgression of the First Couple. There is only one Remedy. The world, as a whole, will continue to reject the Only Remedy for these and every other human ill.

I have done more than enough raging in the past and all the while finding ways to justify my raging. It never did satisfy my passions. They were always hungry for more. I could never feed them enough. I still have moments when my passions try to rise up to overtake better reason. I have to constantly remind myself that rage against anyone or anything is never a Christ-like response.

To live as Christ, something that demands dying to the passions that otherwise hinder, limit, and hide the beautiful reality of Christ living in us, is not easy in this modern age that is so politically charged and polarized. It is never truly easy in any age. There have been times and places where it has been easier. There have been times and places where it has been extremely difficult. I cannot help but to think of the way those early followers of Christ responded to the dire persecutions and persecutors of their time.

Did they rail against those that hated them? No.

The same is true of the Saints and Martyrs of all ages. They hated no one. They raged against no one. They simply sought to live as Christ communicating his message of love and redemption to the world around them.

It behooves us all [especially those of us who profess the Name of Christ] to remember that "the whole world is under the power of the evil one. We also know that the Son of God has come and has given us discernment to know the one who is true.” [1 John 5:19-20] The Apostle John finishes his first epistle to us saying, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." [vs. 21]

We desperately need to pray for generous measures of the gift of discernment in these trying times. This gift of the Holy Spirit is essential in being able to recognize and put behind us the idolatries of our own passions … idolatries that will always set themselves up against God's higher ideals and destroy the personal interior peace promised by Christ. [John 14:27]

Something is terribly amiss within us [both as individuals and as humanity as a whole] when we are constantly inflamed and ruled by our emotions. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

We are either sowing and cultivating peace within ourselves and in the world or sowing and cultivating strife and discord within ourselves and in the world. The choice is ours. The choice is always ours.

Seek peace, keep the faith, pray, and persevere.