Peace.

It’s a notion we see on Christmas cards and bumper stickers. It’s something we all hope for. But for Teny O. Gross, it’s more than a Hallmark greeting or a quaint idea. It’s the goal he pursues every day on the streets of Providence.

Gross is a street worker, a peacemaker. In this age of “Bring ’em on!” bravado, peacemakers might seem out of step — soft in a hard-line era.

But Gross, executive director of The Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence, knows peace is no path for the weak. He knows what it’s like to stand between rival gangs in a West End park when guns are drawn.

A former Israeli Army sergeant, Gross knows that someone carrying a loaded M-16 can look at a group of enemies and think, “I can take them all down, solve the problem; I don’t need to explain anything.”

And he knows that “it takes a lot more courage, a lot more patience, to walk up to people who can’t stand you, who think you are weak” and try to point them toward peace.

“Let’s be very clear: He and the street workers put themselves in harm’s way,” Providence Police Chief Dean M. Esserman said. “And they do it without a gun and without a bulletproof vest. They do it through the force of their beliefs and their personalities, and the credibility and the respect they have on the streets.”

In trying to broker peace, Gross has heard the common refrain of what one side has done to the other. He has heard the grievances of the Israelis and Palestinians, the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, the Providence Street Boyz and Oriental Rascals. He has heard them say: It has always been like this.

But for 7 years now in Providence and for 10 years before that as part of the antiviolence campaign known as the Boston Miracle, Gross has been pursuing change.

Gross, 42, of Providence, graduated with a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School in 2001, and the new issue of Harvard Magazine contains an article about him and the institute. “My job is not pretty — it’s not sending kids to Harvard, or anything fancy,” Gross says in the magazine. “It’s about keeping kids in this city alive between the ages of 14 and 23.”

The institute was created in 2000 by the Rev. Raymond Malm, Sister Ann Keefe and others at St. Michael the Archangel, the same South Providence church my father attended as a child. It came in response to an increase in youth violence, including the death of Jennifer Rivera, a 15-year-old girl gunned down the night before she was to testify in a murder trial.

Esserman said Providence has seen a reduction in violence over the past five years, and his department “is the first to say we didn’t do it alone.”

“The single most important partnership we have to fight crime and violence is Teny Gross and the institute,” Esserman said, adding that he sees Gross everywhere he goes — from shooting scenes to emergency rooms, from wakes to funerals.

This year, Providence has seen 13 homicides, down one from last year, but the city has seen an increase in shootings.

And with the economy faltering, foreclosures spiking and unemployment rising, Gross said he expects peace to be more precarious in the year ahead. In a bottom-line world, the bottom line is we need to find ways to provide jobs, invest in education and protect young people, he said. While it’s easy to be a leader in good times, he said, 2009 will provide a true test of leadership.

On this Christmas Day, let’s think about what we need to do to achieve a goal we all agree on:

Peace.

efitzpat@projo.com