Milford chronicle., 1959-12-25

marks of anxiety and tension. that are re-
vealed in those faces of the great Luxury,
corruption and ambition, combined with an all
pervasive insecurity, had produced in the Roman
ruling classes the equivalent of those deep
discords created by progress" that Pope Plus
XII has perceived in modern man. But of all
this the astOnished shepherds in the fields of
Boaz, to whom the Christian revelation was
first vouchsafed, could have known little, and
that by vaguest rumor. No doubt they were al
most equally ignorant of the violent national
and religious fermentS Seething beneath the
Idumaean repression and the Roman peace.
Nevertheless many Christian writer's, most
notably Bishop Bossuet, have perceived in all
this a providental ordering of events. There
is doubt that the pax Romano, despite the
eruption of new civil wars and barbarian incur
sions, facilitated the rapid spread of Christian
ity throughout the Regean and Mediterranean
worlds. Nor is there any doubt of the debt of
the Medieval Christian Churches, both Latin
and Byzantine, to the Roman Empire for their
outward forms of organization. And the late DR..
Ortega has pointed out how the Empire, en-
dured but detested by Romans themselves, who
never ceased to look back nostalgically upon
the Republic, continued to haunt the imagination
of the rest of Europe for 1000 years after its
collapse and dissolution, for its like has never
been known again. Thus, Dante, the ardent
Christian and passionate Ghibelline in his fam
Gus political treatise, wrote that
It is manifest that universal peace is the
best of those things that are ordered for
IL
shepherds heard from on high not of
wealth. nor of pleasure, nor long life,
For the angelic host proclaims "Glory be
nor strength, nor beauty, but of peace.
to God in the highest and earth peace
to men of good will" For the same rea-
son the Saviour of Men gave us His
greeting, peace be with yOu"
Recently, however, many have reverted to
an earlier concept of peace earth" some
thing wholly apart from the political or eco
nomic or even the biological order and indeed
from history itself. Thus, for example, the
French orientalist, Rene Groussett, a devout
Christian, finds refuge in something like the
fdelism of Pascal, observing that
qhe evolution of life, if it does not cul-
inmate in the ascent to Heaven of an
immortal soul, will have been nothing
but a nightmare. Murder is its pro-
fession. The peace of the forest is only
the assassination of plant by plant in
struggle for humus water and light, and :
of plant by animal AS for human his
tory what historian, judging from on
high, would dare to look upon it with
out horror?
Which of these views must we take on this
Christmas Day of 1859 when it seems not inn
possible that the final chapter of human history
may even now be in the writing? Shall We
retain the hope of translating at least some of
the heavenly peace of Bethlehem into the secu-
lar order, or must submerge all such earthly
hopes into the hope of Eternal peace beyond
the grave?
Nearly 1000 years of Christianity have not
produced a counterpart of the pax Romano
either among the peoples of Christendom of
the wider world. No doubt the explanation is
that in every age the generality of Christians
have never quite brought themselves to liter
al obedience of the injunction to seek first
the Kingdom of Heaven and its righteousness
and have therefore never fully realized all the
promised blessings, including peace. But it
should be some comfort to this generation that
the way remains still open not indeed to another
pax Romano but to the paz Del which is now
so far beyond our plans and even farther be-
yond our human comprehension.