Every human heart longs for peace. Each of us wants to find interior rest from the painful memories of the past, the stress of the present, and worries about the future.

Such peace often seems out of reach, however. We struggle to find rest from the interior turmoil that so often rages within us.

As I thought about what interior peace looks like in preparation for this reflection, I kept returning to the quiet stillness outdoors after a heavy snowfall. When a thick blanket of snow covers the landscape, there is often an almost other-worldly tranquility, as if all of nature is at rest. The whole world somehow seems saturated with silence.

It seems to me that our souls long for a similar kind of silence interiorly, when all of our emotions find rest. Instead, our souls are often like violently shaken snow globes, with our passions whirling this way and that.

Christ came into the world precisely to bring us the peace for which we were created. The prophet Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would be the “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). At Jesus’ birth, the angels proclaimed those well-known words: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.”

Good will is, in fact, a good summary of what our hearts need in order to find peace. We find true peace when we have good will, that is, when our will is united to God and to his will.

As St. Augustine famously prayed, “You made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” A good will is a will that is directed to God, who is the highest good.

St. Augustine explained how we find rest when our passions, or emotions, are directed toward God. According to his classic understanding, we have four basic passions—joy, sorrow, desire, and fear—and these passions are all based on what we love.

We desire to have what we love. We fear not having what we love. We are joyful when we have what we love. We are sorrowful when we do not have what we love. In other words, all of our emotions are rooted in what we love.

When we love passing and changing things—like pleasure, popularity, or possessions—we will be unable to find true and lasting peace. If our hearts cling to such things, our emotions will be pulled to and fro by changes in our relationships, in the approval of others, or in our bank accounts. Loving unstable things leads to an unstable interior life.

Jesus, on the other hand, gives us the recipe for peace when he teaches the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment” (Matthew 22:37–38). God alone is unchanging, never wavering, perfectly good, always faithful. When we set our hearts on the Lord, as St. Augustine taught, our hearts are no longer restless.

To use the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, “God alone satisfies.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, St. Thomas also had great insights about peace, which is the third fruit of the Holy Spirit listed by St. Paul in Galatians 5. St. Thomas explains that the fruits of the Spirit grow from each other, one after the other. Charity, the first fruit, produces joy, the second fruit, which produces peace, the third fruit.

First, we need to receive the gift of charity from the Holy Spirit. St. Paul says in Romans 5:5, “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Through the gift of charity, we love God above all things, setting our hearts on him instead of on the passing things of this world. Through the Holy Spirit, we become aware of the deep love that God has for us, and we desire to love him in return. Charity unites us to the Holy Spirit and conforms us to Jesus Christ.

Charity leads to interior joy. As we saw earlier, we experience joy when we possess what we love. By faith, we know that God is already dwelling within us through grace. As 1 John 4:16 says, “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.” When we love God and are confident that he is within us, we find joy.

Joy then leads to peace. If we love God with our whole hearts and we are confident that the one whom we love is within us by his grace, then our unruly passions find rest. The more fully our hearts are set on God above all else, the less we are interiorly disturbed by the ins and outs and the ups and downs of daily life.

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

In reality, finding and maintaining peace involves consistent effort on our part. Each time the difficulties of life threaten our interior tranquility, we must insist on setting our hearts more fully on God, not on the passing things of this world that our hearts too often cling to. Charity is not a one-time act, but involves many repeated daily decisions to seek our satisfaction in God alone.

One of the best psalms to pray when our peace is wavering is Psalm 62, which begins:

In God alone is my soul at rest;
my salvation comes from him.
He alone is my rock, my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not greatly falter.

The witness of the saints shows us that if our hearts are set on the Lord, then we can learn to maintain peace even amid great difficulties. If we are confident of God’s love for us and his presence within us through grace, we can learn to repeatedly turn our hearts to the Lord who is within us through the grace of Baptism and of Holy Communion.

Another saint who knew this truth well was St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, a young Carmelite whose basic message was that we can find a glimpse of heaven already in our souls, because God dwells there by grace. May each of us make her prayer our own:

O my God, Trinity whom I adore, let me entirely forget myself that I may abide in you, still and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity; let nothing disturb my peace nor separate me from you, O my unchanging God, but that each moment may take me further into the depths of your mystery! Pacify my soul! Make it your heaven, your beloved home and place of your repose; let me never leave you there alone, but may I be ever attentive, ever alert in my faith, ever adoring and all given up to your creative action.

May the Holy Spirit descend upon us like a thick blanket of snow, bringing rest to any anxieties, sorrows, or other unruly passions, so that our souls may find their peace in God alone.