If St. Augustine is correct in defining peace as the tranquility that one experiences when he lives in the proper order, which of the sons in the Parable of the Prodigal Son experienced true peace?

A strong argument can be made for the younger son, particularly considering his contrition and return to his father following his wayward meanderings. However, naïve presumption would conclude that just because he had returned to the safe-haven of his father’s care that everything was always and everywhere smooth sailing in his relationship with his father from then on. Perhaps the case can be well made for the older son, who was always found to be in his father’s house and about his father’s business. Yet we learn that behind his acts of strict obedience to the father lurked a begrudging attitude that tainted a purely willful love and life-giving relationship with his father.

Which son, then, experienced true peace?

The answer is not immediate or even straightforward. Peace is not strictly a moment, although its correct path can be realized or not at any moment. Rather, peace is sought, cultivated, and purified over time through a series of choices in concrete circumstances that helps us appreciate how one is (or isn’t) living in the right manner; and as Christians this means in union with Jesus Christ, who in the power of the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, bringing us back to the Father.

Peace is not an emotion or feeling; peace is present when the proper manner of thinking and the proper manner of living are in concert with each other. With peace, there is a rightly ordered harmony directing the soul to embrace God and His ways.

In the parable, the older son manifests the proper manner of living while simultaneously concealing the hardness of his heart with bitter thinking. Conversely, the younger son’s impetuosity precludes rightly ordered thinking thus highlighting a great obstacle for proper living. Since there is no unity of virtuous right thinking and proper living, it is unsurprising that neither son knows peace on his own terms. The younger son’s brash impulsiveness toward his father and everything that his father is about highlight the absence of the Cardinal Virtue of Justice (rendering to another what is his due). The older son’s contempt for his father’s ways, manner, and declarations also indicates the absence of the virtue of justice in his life. In this specific context one may say “no justice, no peace; know justice, know peace.” The hearts and souls of both sons were independently incapable of the “18-inch pilgrimage” meant to bridge mind and heart, internal and external by means of uniting rightly ordered thinking and living.

Both brothers are suffering souls, with each suffering uniquely but sharing one thing in common: the father. After much futile thinking and living by both brothers, it is the embrace of the father that powerfully bridges the divide between mind and heart. In other words, the pilgrimage to unity in rightly ordered thinking and proper living — the pilgrimage of peace — is possible only “through Him, with Him, and in Him.” These are the same words we hear at Holy Mass in reference to the one mediator, Jesus Christ, who leads us back to the Father.

The only Begotten Son is the bridge to union with the Most-High God. “No one comes to Father except through me,” says the Prince of Peace, He who is the Incarnation, Manifestation, and Divine Assistance of rightly ordered thinking and proper living. What comfort we take in the words of our Lord: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9) for “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30).

Occasionally the titling of the parable of The Prodigal Son is presented as The Merciful Father. Either way, the parable teaches many things, among which is the soul’s search for peace. Having not found peace by following the world’s manner of thinking and living, it comes to each son precisely through the embrace by the father, which, once received by each child — the younger son in faith and the older son in hope — is subsequently reciprocated by their embrace of the father and everything that the father is, has, and asks. From the divine perspective this is constant, steadfast because He “is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), whereas from the human point of view it waxes and wanes and is therefore a never-ending process in this life.

Peace is a pilgrimage of purification in rightly ordered thinking and proper living melding ever more harmoniously into the unity of being through the divine embrace of God. The soul must always seek after peace and pursue it. There is no absolute final fulfillment of peace this side of heaven, and yet it is possible for the soul to experience a crescendo of true peace while on earth.

Consider the Most Holy Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Think rightly and live accordingly, so that by this unending give and take there is an eagerness “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in a bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). And may the reciprocated love of fathers and sons be strengthened by prayer, especially before the Most Blessed Sacrament, so that day by day those relationships may bear the image of the Eternal Divine Embrace we hear chanted at the end of Eucharistic Adoration: “Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharistic as the memorial of your suffering and death; may our worship of this Sacrament of Your Body and Blood help us to experience the salvation you won for us, and the peace of the Kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever.”

Amen.