Catholic World News News Feature
Real peace is won by uncompromising battle: Pope August 20, 2007
In his Angelus audience on Sunday, August 19, Pope Benedict XVI said that true peace is not the absence of conflict, but the product of a constant battle against evil.
Speaking to the crowd gathered at midday in the courtyard of the apostolic palace in Castel Gandolfo, the Holy Father concentrated on the words of Jesus from the day's Gospel reading: "Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division."
Those words are a reminder that Christ's followers will always encounter conflict, the Pope said. Anyone who has the courage to pursue "truth without compromise" will meet with opposition and perhaps even outright persecution.
Christ is the source of peace for His followers, the Pope continued, and those who embrace the Lord's words without reservation will imitate Him by resolutely rejecting evil. In that way they may become, like St. Francis of Assisi, "instruments of His peace"-- not because they avoid conflict but because they overcome evil with good.
Pope Benedict concluded his short meditation on the Gospel by noting that the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Peace, did not avoid conflict but shared fully in her Son's mission, always acting so as to reflect divine grace, and "never giving in to compromise with evil."
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