Seek Peace
Lately I have been thinking of St. Paul’s advice in Romans: “As far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” If we want war in this world, we can find war, and war is what we will get. But if we want peace, then we can find that too, as long as we are willing to be the ones to bring it.
Nowhere do I see this more clearly than in the true story of St. Francis meeting with Sultan Mohammed Al-Kamil during the Crusades. If you are unfamiliar with this incredible historical episode, check out this article by the Franciscan order; or better yet, watch the online documentary “The Sultan and the Saint,” which you can rent through PBS Documentaries, Apple TV, or Amazon Prime. (It is only an hour long, but please be advised that it contains several violent battle scenes.)
https://www.kpbs.org/news/arts-culture/2017/12/05/sultan-and-saint
In our Scripture for this coming Sunday, we will hear from St. Paul that “from one ancestor God made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him” (Acts 17:26). The Qu’ran repeats this wisdom from God in its 49th chapter: “O humanity! Indeed, We created you from a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes, so that you may get to know one another.”
I love that in Islam, finding God has been equated with finding each other. We are different by God’s design, and by pursuing an encounter with each other we find more than peace, we find God. St. Francis didn’t end the Crusades, but he went away from his encounter with Muslim civilization profoundly changed, his spirituality and his instructions for his Order forever altered. Francis’s legacy of peacemaking, 800 years after he set out to meet “the Other,” is more relevant than ever. God doesn’t need us to change our religions, but he does need us to be more like Francis.
with love, Pr. Chelsea
