Our Lady of Peace, Patron of January 17

Feast Days of Our Lady

Our Lady of Peace - January 17

Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira

The feast day of Our Lady of Peace, which is celebrated in Rome on January 17, is celebrated in Toledo, Spain and Hawaii on January 24, in Paris on July 9 and in El Salvador on November 23.

There are persons who consider earthly goods as supreme. For them peace is necessary to maintain these goods and to continue to have a pleasant life. According to this purely materialist conception, the principal aim of religion would be to promote well-being on earth. Eternal life is not taken into account.

Our Lady of Peace is the Queen of Order

Further, this concept of peace excludes the fact that there are impious persons who know and desire evil. They want evil to dominate and will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. If people like these exist, then it is indisputable that the fight between good and evil must exist. These men who promote evil are constantly striving to deny the rights of God and His doctrine and to destroy the Civilization based upon His Commandments. If this is so, a fight must be waged until these enemies of God are exterminated.

If God were not the living and true God, if it were not certain that He gave us His doctrine, instituted His Church, revealed His Law, then everything could be accommodated and tolerated.

However, if God exists, if He established a Church and a Law and if there is a Civilization based upon this Law, then the man who wishes to destroy all this must be seen as an unjust aggressor. Further, I can only be faithful to God if I openly fight against him and, more broadly, against the currents of thought, organizations and political parties that work with him to realize this goal.

In final analysis, giving liberty to those who are evil or making peace accords with them is tantamount to delivering the good to be persecuted by the evil. For wherever an evil man is present, he persecutes the good. He is an implacable enemy of the good; he tries to create every kind of obstacles for the good. To enter into peace with one who is evil does nothing but give him better means to persecute the good in all possible ways.

Therefore, there cannot be a more erroneous idea than the idea of a peace based on liberty given to those who are evil and on an accord between the evil and the good. This accord will never be respected by the evil side.

Since Adam and Eve until the end of the world, the Cains will always persecute and kill the Abels. This is indisputable. The most irrefutable evidence is in the life of Our Lord. It was impossible to have greater sanctity, virtue, a more beautiful doctrine, more stupendous miracles, or a greater power of attracting man to grace than what He had. What was done to Him? The evil ones crucified Him.

The conclusion is that the goodness of the good does not defeat the wickedness of the evil. Those who are evil will always fight to annihilate the good, because they hate the good. Consequently the idea of a peace based on an agreement with the wicked is completely wrong.

Crusaders, a necessary component to maintain order

What is true peace? St. Thomas Aquinas defines peace as the tranquility of order. Once order is established, tranquility flows from it: this is peace. So, the means to achieve peace is not to enter into an agreement with the adversaries of order, the propagators of disorder; to have peace it is necessary to promote order. When we promote order, peace will automatically come. When we do not defend order but permit it to be despised, turmoil will automatically follow.

Since peace is the tranquility of order, peace is fundamentally order. Our Lady of Peace, therefore, is Our Lady of Order. In promoting peace, she favors everything to be in order. Now, to be in order is to be in accord with the will of God, to follow the Law of God and to fulfill the plan of God. This is what order is.

Our Lady of Peace is Our Lady of Christian Civilization; she is Our Lady of the Crusades, of the Orders of Chivalry, of the Inquisition. Since Christian Civilization is the representation of order, these institutions were the means to defend order against those who want to destroy it.

It is quite coherent, therefore, that Our Lady of Peace should also be the patron of Catholic militancy as well. There is a harmonic contrast in these concepts that brings them together very well.

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Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira

The Saint of the Day features highlights from the lives of saints based on comments made by the late Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira. Following the example of St. John Bosco who used to make similar talks for the boys of his College, each evening it was Prof. Plinio's custom to make a short commentary on the lives of the next day's saint in a meeting for youth in order to encourage them in the practice of virtue and love for the Catholic Church. TIA thought that its readers could profit from these valuable commentaries.

The texts of both the biographical data and the comments come from personal notes taken by Atila S. Guimaraes from 1964 to 1995. Given the fact that the source is a personal notebook, it is possible that at times the biographic notes transcribed here will not rigorously follow the original text read by Prof. Plinio. The commentaries have also been adapted and translated for TIA's site.