Dictionary of all Scriptures & Myths

PEACE AND A SWORD

Symbols of passive and active conditions.

"Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law and a man's foes shall be they of his own household." - MATTHEW x. 34-6.

"Peace" is the stilling, the quieting, the calm, negative condition. The "sword" is the outgoing or positive side of the nature, which must needs be exercised ere the other is possible to a soul's attaining. The Christ-soul is speaking on the active side of life's endeavour, from which point of view such apparently painful results are entailed through His operations. The progressed mental quality becomes opposed to its "father," the less progressed; the raised emotion is averse to the lower emotion, its "mother." The foes of the soul are to be found in its desires which encompass it round.

"And indeed He came not to bring peace on the earth, that is, to corporeal and sensible things, but a sword, and to cut through, if I may so say so, the disastrous friendship of soul and body, so that the soul, committing herself to the spirit which was against the flesh, may enter into friendship with God." - ORIGEN, Comm. on John, Bk. I. § 36.

The only way in this world to get peace is to make it out of pain. And, after all, did you come into this world to find happiness; was it for your own sake alone that you were created into the midst of this vast humanity? What are you that you should pay so much attention to yourself and lose in that attention the thought of others? You are not here to find happiness directly, as the first thing. You are here to discover truth, and the way is dark, and leads to the Cross before it finds the Resurrection.” – STOPFORD A. BROOKE, Serm., Lord, Increase Our Faith.

"In this world we cannot yet have peace without previous war in matters pertaining to truth. Every truth, or form of truth, calls up its opponent falsehood; every good insisted on evokes its own special adversary, and war is inevitable. I came not, said Christ, to send peace on earth, but a sword." — Ibid., Serm., God is Spirit.

See Also

CHILD
FATHER (Lower)
GIL-GAMES
PARENTS
SCOURGE
SWORD