I come not to bring this old peace which is merely the absence of tension; I come to bring a positive peace which is the presence of justice and the Kingdom of God. Peace is not merely the absence of something. but it’s the presence of something. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

Depending on who you ask, the second candle on the advent wreath is said to symbolize either “love” or “peace”. The twin blessings of love and peace are surely related. Oftentimes, when a person is asked why they are looking to deepen their prayer life, that person’s response will have something to do with the search for greater peace. Yet, when we say we want “peace,“ the vast majority of us make the same mistake that Dr. King identified in the quote above: we assume that true peace is an absence of struggle, an absence of suffering. An honest look at the life of Christ will tell us that, in truth, peace and suffering are not mutually exclusive. Rather than being an absence of conflict, Fr. King again astutely names peace as a presence, and the name we might as well give to this presence is “love.” Yes, true peace is finding, or even bringing, love in the midst of the tension and the suffering of daily life. In contemplation, we come to recognize love is present in all times, in all places, and thus find true peace.