(Please read the passage cited above first.)
My sisters and brothers,
How come there are envy, rivalries, wars, struggles, and conflicts among every kind of evil among us? We desire peace, we need peace. Why do we not have peace?
We desire peace in our relatives, in our families, in our nation and in the world. Why is there no peace? If I do not have peace within myself, I cannot contribute anything to peace in the world, and indeed I shall contribute much to warring in the world. If I have peace within myself, I contribute to peace in the world. I cannot give what I do not have, and I can only give what I have.
For St James, wisdom means the same as peace. For the people of the ancient world, wisdom meant the right way of living in the world, and the wise person always was a person of peace.
For many today, however, the wise person is the person rich in money, but necessarily rich in relationships. When there is peace, the people of the world increase in number, in productivity, in harmony, in good relationships and there is much happiness. When there is no peace, but rather war, then we kill the peoples of the world and bring grief and suffering to others. Peace is life; war is death. Peace builds and supports everything; war destroys everything.
For me, the struggle within myself is my pleasures and passions go contrary to what God wants me to do. My peace is with God, my war is what I prefer to do. It is the same with you. Our envies, rivalries, bad desires and ambitions run contrary to what God would have us do, and so we are at odds within ourselves and cause fights within our communities with our fellow citizens and with the other nations and peoples of the world. The peace or the warring among the nations of the world reflect the peace or the warring within each one of us. As each one of us is, so is the world.
The wisdom of St James teaches us how to establish true peace in our world. Let us ask God to give us the grace we need so that each of us does the works of peace so that we can share our peace with the whole world. Would that we ask and receive peace for the glory of God and the well-being of every person in the world.