The Peace and All Good Column

Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer, OFM Conv., is the seventh Archbishop of Atlanta. In “Peace and All Good,” he shares pastoral reflections.

On Easter Sunday, the Risen Lord offered a greeting: “Peace be with you.” Those words, spoken to frightened disciples behind locked doors, have never stopped echoing. They reach us still—across two thousand years of human history, across all the noise and heartbreak of our own age. They need to reach us now more than ever. 

We live in a world at war with itself. Missiles strike civilian neighborhoods in the Middle East. The people of Ukraine continue to endure suffering that strains the imagination. Conflict bleeds across parts of Africa and Asia. Children grow up knowing only rubble where houses once stood. As Pope Leo XIV said on Easter Sunday in his Urbi et Orbi address, we are in danger of growing numb to it all: “We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it and becoming indifferent—indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people, indifferent to the repercussions of hatred and division that conflict sows, indifferent to the economic and social consequences they produce, which we all feel.” 

Our Holy Father is right. And that indifference is itself a kind of spiritual wound. It is not neutrality. It is surrender. 

Pope Leo has spoken with striking consistency and urgency throughout this Easter season about the call to peace. Since his very first greeting as Bishop of Rome, he has proclaimed what he calls a peace “unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering”—a peace that “comes from God who loves us all unconditionally.”  

Pope Leo XIV prays the rosary for peace during an evening prayer vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican April 11. CNS photo/Vatican Media

In his Message for the World Day of Peace, he wrote with characteristic directness: “Peace exists; it wants to dwell within us. The task is not to create it, but to welcome it, and to allow it to disarm us.” 

This past Saturday, April 11, the Holy Father gave that conviction visible form. He led a Vigil for Peace in St. Peter’s Basilica—a vigil he had announced from the same balcony where he proclaimed the Resurrection. Thousands gathered in the basilica and in the square. The faithful around the world joined from afar. Together they prayed the Glorious Mysteries of the rosary, with meditations drawn from the Church fathers, as delegates from different continents lit candles from the Lamp of Peace that burns perpetually at the tomb of St. Francis in Assisi. The light of the Resurrection, passed from the Little Poor Man of Assisi across eight centuries, illuminates our darkness still. 

Love lifts up 

At the vigil, the Holy Father spoke with a pastor’s fire and a father’s grief. He cried out: “Enough of war!” He appealed to the rulers of nations: “Stop! It is time for peace! Sit at tables of dialogue and mediation, not at tables where rearmament is planned and death is deliberated.” 

And he reminded us that prayer is not an escape from responsibility. It is, he said, “the most selfless, universal and transformative response to death: we are a people who are already risen!”  

War divides, he told us. Hope unites. Arrogance tramples upon others; love lifts up. A little faith, he said—“a mere crumb of faith”­—is enough to face this dramatic hour in history. 

Those words have a Franciscan resonance that touches me deeply as a spiritual son of St. Francis. In his letter marking the Jubilee Year of St. Francis, the Holy Father wrote of Francis with tenderness and clarity: “In this age, marked by so many seemingly interminable wars, by internal and social divisions that create mistrust and fear, he continues to speak. Not because he offers technical solutions, but because his life points to the authentic source of peace.” 

St. Francis did not theorize about peace. He lived it. He walked unarmed into the camp of the Sultan-al-Kamil of Egypt in a remarkable peaceful and humble encounter. He reconciled the Bishop of Assisi and the Mayor of the city—inserting their reconciliation into his Canticle of the Creatures as a prophecy of what humanity could become. He greeted every person he met with the words: “The Lord give you peace.” That was not a pleasantry. It was an evangelical proclamation. 

The gift of peace daily 

So what can we do? What does it mean to live the Risen Lord’s gift of peace in our own daily lives, here in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, in our parishes and schools, workplaces and homes? 

First, we can pray. Pope Leo has asked us to pray without ceasing for peace. This is not merely a pious suggestion. Prayer changes us. It opens us to God’s possibilities when our own seem exhausted. Pray the rosary. Pray for those who suffer in war. Pray for those in power who must choose between weapons and dialogue. 

Second, we can refuse indifference. When news of distant suffering reaches us—and it does, every day, through our phones and computer screens—we can resist the temptation to scroll past it. These are human beings. Each one is made in the image of God. Each one is our brother or sister. To feel their pain is not weakness. It is the beginning of solidarity. 

Third, we can be instruments of peace in our immediate world. The great Franciscan prayer—“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace” is addressed to each of us. In every place where there is hatred, we can sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. We do not have to solve the war in the Middle East to live the peace of the Risen Christ. We have to show up, every day, in our own corner of the world, and choose differently than the culture of conflict around us. 

Fourth, we can support those who work for peace—Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities, our missionaries who serve in conflict zones and the diplomatic efforts of the Holy See. These are not peripheral activities. They are the Church’s works of mercy made concrete. 

Finally, we can allow Easter to be what it is: not a single Sunday of celebration, but a season and a way of life. The Risen Christ is not a consolation for an unjust world. He is the beginning of a new one. “We are a people who are already risen,” Pope Leo XIV told us at the vigil. Let us live like it. 

In the words with which our Holy Father concluded his prayer at the Vigil for Peace, I make his words my own: “Lord Jesus, you conquered death without weapons or violence: you shattered its power with the strength of peace. Grant us your peace, as you did to the women filled with doubt on Easter morning, as you did to the disciples who were hiding in fear. Send forth your Spirit, the breath that gives life and reconciles, that turns adversaries and enemies into brothers and sisters. 

Christ is risen! He is truly risen! And may the Risen Lord grant peace to our world.