Peace Is Established in the Heart Little by Little

Maintain a constant care not to allow your heart to fall into confusion and agitation, but strive in every way to keep it in a peaceful and calm disposition. And God, seeing how you labor and strive for this, will by his grace build in your soul a city of peace, and your heart will then become a house of consolation—as is allegorically understood in the following verse of the Psalms: ”Jerusalem, built as a city” (Ps. 121:3). God desires from you only this: that every time you happen to be disturbed by anything, you immediately restore peace in yourself and remain at peace in all your deeds and occupations. Know that you have need of patience for this. For just as a city is not built in a single day, so do not suppose that interior peace can be acquired in a single day. For this too is nothing other than the building of a house for the God of peace and a tabernacle for the Most High, that you may become a temple for him. Know also that God himself is both the builder of this house within you, and that without him all your labor toward this end will be in vain, as it is written: ”Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 126:1). Know too that the chief foundation of this peace of heart is humility, and the avoidance of deeds, occupations, and undertakings that are agitating and troublesome. As for the first: who does not know that humility, peace of heart, and meekness are so closely united with one another that where one is, there also are the others; one who is quiet of heart and meek is also humble, and conversely, one who is humble of heart is meek and peaceful? Hence the Lord placed them in an inseparable union when he said: ”Learn from me, for I am meek and humble in heart” (Matt. 11:29). As for the second, we see a prefiguration in ancient history—namely, in the fact that God desired the house for him to be built not by David, who had to wage wars and live in agitation for nearly all his life, but by his son Solomon, who, in keeping with his name, was a king of peace and waged war against no one.