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Some of the most popular Christmas cards are reproductions of the many images of “The Peaceable Kingdom” painted by the Pennsylvania Quaker folk artist Edward Hicks (1780 – 1849). Time after time Hicks returned to depictions of today’s text from Isaiah. Perhaps when we are younger the focus of our desire for peace is outward. We’re like John the Baptist in today’s Gospel. We want to call one and all to a new way of thinking (installing a new mind!) which is what “repent” really means. Perhaps as we grow older, our expectations shrink and we think that we’d be happy if the members of our family and friends, our work colleagues, our parish or religious community could come to live in peace. Then the words from today’s Epistle of Paul to the Romans become our prayer: “May the God of encouragement grant you to think in harmony with one another.” Wouldn’t that be great? Then perhaps later in life we begin to realize that all along there has been a lion, a leopard and a bear within our own hearts. If we are blessed enough to take long hard looks at these dark parts of ourselves we may then also see that the child promised by the prophets is also deep within our hearts. The child is there already and is yet to come. The child is the Christ-self within us. Once we befriend and care for that child the peaceable kingdom begins to come to reality within us and we begin to move out to those to whom we have been blind and in need of our attention and care. Then others begin to “catch our peace” as though it were a communicative blessing. As far as this happens this Advent and Christmastide the world will have moved a little closer to the peaceable kingdom promised by Isaiah, founded by Christ and being built in the Spirit in and through and among us.
- Fr. Andrew D. Ciferni, O. Praem, is Prior of Daylesford Abbey (Paoli, PA).
