Unarmed and Disarming
Alessandro D’Avenia - Peace is the word with which Pope Leo XIV inaugurated his pontificate. It is not a utopia or a political project, but the essence of faith. It is the peace that Christ first promised to his disciples: “I leave you peace: it is my peace that I give you. I do not give it to you as the world gives it. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid” (Jn 14:27); and which he then gave them, once risen, with a breath, “While the doors of the place where the disciples were gathered were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (Jn 20:19-22).
This peace, unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering, as the Pope has defined it, is not an ideology or idealism, but the description of Christ's life given to those who want it, here and now: just as God creates human beings by breathing on them, “formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being” (Gen 2:7), in the same way Christ re-creates them with a breath, the Spirit who gives and spreads this peace, which is the hallmark of the Gospel. But what is this peace? Why is it different from that of the world?
Christ specifies that his is a different peace from that which the world can give. The latter, as shown by the ancient root pag-, indicated the binding of two parties by means of a “pactum,” a pact (traces of the same root may also remain in our word “pay,” in the sense of being on equal terms), and is the fruit of compromise. For the ancient Romans, in fact, the state of war was the natural state of relations with foreign peoples, unless pacts were made to regulate them (all imperial politics dictates power relations, yesterday as today).
The so-called “Pax Romana” was the interruption of the state of permanent war, a balance imposed by the strongest, as long as it lasted. When Christ says “peace be with you,” in Latin “pax vobis,” he does not impose a relationship of divine power over humans, an agreement between warring parties, but creates a new condition in which the human and the divine are one. In fact, in the original Greek, the phrase sounds like “Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν” (eirēnē hymin), where the word “peace” does not mean “pact” (another word was used) but a state of being. It does not use a legal or diplomatic term, but the condition of those who are in harmony with themselves, with things, with others, because they have within themselves the life of God, which is Love.
Eirēnē was the Greek word closest to the Hebrew “shalom,” a greeting used by Semitic peoples, but in the discourse of the risen Christ, it is not a mere wish but a fact: happiness, joy, fullness, integrity, salvation, here and now, and always. Christ offers his own, by breathing the Spirit, a new condition in which everyone can, if they so desire, flourish, because the obstacle to happiness—evil in all its manifestations (death, pain, fear, violence...)—will never prevail (“Evil will not prevail,” said Leo XIV, not to console the faithful with marketing promises, but to remind them how things stand on the level of faith). The peace that Christ “breathes” into his own is therefore very different from the uncertain peace of the world. It is not mental or material well-being, or a temporary balance imposed by the strongest, but a new way of living: for love and to love.
Whether or not this peace exists in the world depends precisely on Christians, because this is the gift and task they have received, as happens to two people who love each other: they set up a home and expand the life they have within them. This peace, described as a breath and therefore not as something imposed, must first be accepted every day, for only then does it produce subjectively what it is objectively (a gift is not a gift unless it is accepted, grace is not received unless it is wanted). This peace is therefore a state that precedes any project or commitment, which are then its logical consequence. Peace is unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering because this is how Christ is. If Christ is in us, this is how we are: “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and greater works than these” (Jn 14:12), words that, taken seriously, would fill the churches.
Therefore, the Pope is reminding Christians not of a project, program, utopia, label, or ideology to commit themselves to, but of who they are by grace received and who they can become more and more by free choice. This way of being does not differentiate them in any way from others; they have the same faults and virtues, fortunes and misfortunes, limitations and talents, failures and successes, but all with a joy and absence of fear that is not of this world, that is, explainable by human forces alone.
It is like when my mother (best wishes to mine and to all mothers for yesterday's celebration) makes a cake that I could also make, because the ingredients are the same, but hers is always on another level: “What did you put in it? What’s the secret?” How, then, can we ensure that this unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering peace is given? Christ explains it in another text whose power has been downplayed: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’; but I say to you, do not resist an evil person; if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles... You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, who makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt 5:38-45). These words, spoken in the context of the “Sermon on the Mount,” are often considered an idealism to strive for, but nevertheless unattainable.
Christ, however, is not inviting us to be slapped in the face, but is describing what happens to those who believe in him and therefore receive his life/peace: they defuse violence at its inception, they are unarmed and therefore disarm. The object of a quarrel is almost always insignificant, but it becomes war precisely because we have been unable to resist the “initial violence,” which then causes escalation at the micro and macro levels. We do not fight because of something, but we use something as a pretext to fight. Abandoning the object of the dispute (in the metaphor, the cheek, the tunic, the mile...) subverts the worldly logic of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Christ reads violence as contagious, and so does love, which in fact flows. This is why Pope Leo XIV said to never go to sleep without asking for forgiveness and without a caress, because only this interrupts the escalation that will have no energy to grow the next day. It happens to us when someone insults us in traffic. If we respond, we start a war, a war over nothing (the three seconds that the other person thinks they have lost because of us, three seconds to do what?). If, on the other hand, we smile, everything deflates: “Disarming!”
This is true in every area, even in today’s wars, at the root of which are “lands” that could and should have been divided but which violence has now made indivisible, with reactions beyond any legitimate defense, paid for mostly by innocent people. Christ’s words are therefore not an invitation to passivity, to allow oneself to be mistreated, but to a much more courageous, intelligent, and lasting action: to unmask violence, rendering it meaningless while there is still time, to immediately show the nothingness for which one would come to feel “justified” in destroying the life of another. Something that today’s powerful do not know and do not want to do, unlike many people on the street. This is what the new Pope has asked of Christians, of whom he is the guide and servant (“with you Christian, for you bishop,” he said in the words of Augustine): to bring the life of Christ, that is, peace, back into the world. This is a peace worthy of a lion.
Source: Il Corriere della Sera. This article has been posted from its original source (
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