Have We Softened Peace?: How Four Sermons Challenged My Idea of Christmas Peace

Every year, when Advent rolls around, we circle back to the same four words of the season—hope, peace, joy, and love—the familiar themes of Advent. They’re beautiful topics. Comforting. Familiar to us. And yet, year after year, pastors are expected to say something fresh about these subjects. We’re expected to present some unique angle, some observation not thought of before.

It got me to thinking: after all these years, is there really anything left to say about these topics that hasn’t already been said?

Take, for example, the theme of the Second Sunday of Advent—peace. We sing about it. We talk about it while surrounded by lights and quiet music. Like a beloved Christmas ornament, peace has a sentimental quality during this season. It’s doubtful I can say anything that someone hasn’t already said  — and probably said better than I ever could.

But I began to wonder, What has already been said about peace during Advents gone by?

So I decided to go looking.

I randomly pulled four sermons from the early twentieth century, all centered on the Second Sunday of Advent. I didn’t go in with a theory. I didn’t look for specific authors. I was simply curious. What did the subject of peace sound like years ago? Did earlier preachers talk about it differently from the way we typically do?

What I found was not exactly what I expected—but it also didn’t really surprise me.

Across four sermons, written between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, the theme of peace was present in every one. But oh, what a difference in the concept!

Peace was not presented in these sermons as something soft or sentimental. It wasn’t a seasonal mood. It was described as something entirely different—something costly. Something that came, paradoxically, only after disorder was exposed, after repentance was embraced, after suffering was endured, and after patience was learned.

What struck me most was this: nearly two hundred years ago, the first advent of Christ was not imagined as occurring in an already peaceful scene. Instead, the idea was that Jesus came to restore what had been broken. He did not come into peace—He came to bring peace. And in the mind of those early preachers, His peace is always the end of a process, not the starting assumption.

The sermons had three things in common about peace.

First, peace is rooted in what Christ will finish.

The four sermons that I randomly selected all describe peace as something that Christ will bring when He comes. It is tied to the end times—the return of Jesus—what we frequently call the “Second Advent.”

One of the sermons was written by Isaac Williams. It was titled simply Second Sunday of Advent. He presents peace as a hope that is found not in present conditions, but in what is coming. He reminds his parishioners that the Church lives suspended between the first coming of Christ, when He came in humility, and the second coming of Christ, when He will come in great glory. He writes:

“The Gospel describes what is still a matter of prophecy received by faith, not by sight… then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”

For Williams, peace was not an emotional sensation during the holidays. Peace is bound to the visible return of Christ, when disorder is finally set into order. He does not see the present season as an age of peace—it is the age of waiting, endurance, and trembling hope.

A sermon by Dom Prosper Guéranger from his collection, The Liturgical Year, presents the Second Sunday of Advent as a call to prepare for the return of Christ. The Church, he says, cries out:

“Arise, O Jerusalem… behold the joy that will come to thee from thy God.”

Guéranger does not describe peace as the atmosphere of the season. Instead, it is a destination. Peace is something the believer is moving toward. But the journey to that destination involves waiting, repentance, and endurance. The candle of peace is lit not because peace is already here, but because Christ is coming to bring it.

This perspective changes everything we understand about peace in the season of Advent. Peace is no longer a mood we decorate with lights, but a promise we wait for in the dark.

Second, peace is moral—not emotional—because it requires repentance and submission.

In the four sermons I read, peace is never described as an emotional state. It is always connected to the moral condition of the soul. One does not feel peace; one is filled with peace by way of repentance.

One of the sermons was written by St. Alphonsus Liguori but was preached by Nicholas Callan. His sermon is especially direct on this point. His entire message is focused on tribulation as an instrument of God’s correction. He presents suffering not as an interruption to peace, but as the very means by which peace becomes possible. He writes:

“Tribulation opens the eyes which prosperity had kept shut… God is a physician, and tribulation is a salutary medicine.”

How different this vision of Advent peace is from what we tend to imagine today — the idea that wounds must first be opened before they can be healed. For Liguori, peace is not granted to the unrepentant heart—and it is tribulation that often leads men to the point of repentance so that peace might be gained.

A sermon by George Stanhope uses the question John asked Jesus while he was in prison: “Art thou He that should come?” The force of the question is that the audience is confronted not only with their expectation of Christ’s return, but with the accountability that should accompany such an expectation. Christ does not merely come to comfort; He comes to judge. This means that peace is the result of a world reshaped by truth.

Again, what a difference between the meditation of Advent two centuries ago and our modern expressions of peace. Peace comes after the soul has been confronted, corrected, and realigned. There is no peace without repentance. And there is no peace without surrender.

Finally, peace is costly—because it is gained through suffering, endurance, and purification.

In each of these four sermons, peace stands on the other side of great struggle. These early-twentieth-century ministers did not present peace as immediate. And it certainly was not cheap. Peace is a condition forged under pressure.

When Liguori wrote of tribulation, he insisted that God did not merely permit it—God used it. He described God with these words: “He woundeth and cureth. He striketh, and His hand shall heal.”

Peace, in this vision, comes much like healing after surgery—one performed by the Great Physician.

Williams speaks of the importance of endurance while we wait for the return of Christ. He describes a world that is shaking—but he places peace on the far side of that shaking.

This earlier understanding of peace during the season of Advent is certainly not cheap. But at the same time, suffering is not treated as the enemy of peace. Although this feels foreign to our modern imagination, it is far more biblical.

Conclusion

The kind of peace described in these four sermons certainly challenges our Christmas-candle concept of the subject. But when framed this way, it radically changes our understanding of peace. Rather than seeing peace as an ideal—something manufactured or sentimental—real peace is rooted in what Christ will finish when He comes.

And during the Advent season, that expectation of His Second Coming should place a moral pressure upon us for repentance. It should also carry us beyond mere sentiment, so that we do not crumble under disappointment when suffering comes.

Christmas peace comes through Christ—not only the inner peace brought into our hearts now, but the radical peace that will arrive at His next appearing.

After thinking about peace this way, I’m going to light the candle of peace quite differently during this season.