In today’s Gospel, Jesus says
to his disciples,
“Peace I leave with you; my
peace I give to you.”
St. Augustine wrote, “Peace is
so great a good that. . .
no word falls more gratefully
upon the ear,
nothing is desired with
greater longing,
in fact, nothing better can be
found. . . .
just as there is no one
who
does not wish for joy,
so there is no one
who does
not wish for peace”
(Civ. Dei
19.11-12).
Peace is something that we
seek
both as individuals and as societies.
When this promise of peace
fell upon the ears of Jesus’ disciples
they must have heard it with
great longing.
They, like us, longed for
peace within themselves;
their hearts, like our hearts,
were filled
with conflicting emotions and
ideas and commitments
pulling them in a hundred
different directions.
They, like, us, longed for
peace in their society;
their world, like our world,
was a dangerous, violent place,
scarred by war and injustice,
hatred and oppression.
The promise of peace –
peace within themselves and
peace among peoples –
must have fallen upon their
ears
as something too good to be
true,
yet also as a promise
that
they desperately wanted to believe.
Jesus’s promise of peace
is
something that we accept on faith,
on our belief that he will, as
it says in our Gospel,
come to us and make his
dwelling in us;
it is his presence within us
that brings peace to our warring hearts.
Likewise, in our second
reading,
from the book of Revelation,
we hear the apostle John’s vision
of the heavenly Jerusalem.
According to some
interpretations,
the name “Jerusalem” means “abode of peace.”
The vision of the heavenly
Jerusalem
is a vision of a world at peace.
And we are told that what makes
that city
to be truly an abode of peace
is not the beauty of its walls
or gates or foundations,
but that fact that the Lamb of
God
dwells there with God’s people,
in their midst, as their light
and their temple.
The promise of peace within us
and peace around us
must grow from the promise of
God’s presence with us.
Jesus’ promise of peace
involves
accepting the gift of God’s presence,
which allows us to heed Jesus’
command:
“Do not let your hearts be
troubled or afraid.”
But the peace of Christ involves
not only accepting God’s gift;
it also involves giving
something up;
it requires us to give up our
desire
to secure our own peace
by controlling people and
situations.
To return to St. Augustine:
he says that peace is so
desired by human beings
that even those who wage wars
hope that, in the end,
their wars will bring peace.
He notes, however, that those
who start wars
do not simply want peace;
they want peace on their own
terms,
a peace “that suits their wishes,”
a peace in which they can impose
upon others
“their own conditions of
peace” (Civ. Dei 19.12).
We want peace,
but the peace
that comes from absolute control.
This desire for control shows
itself
both in our social relations
and in our inner lives;
we not only want to bend
others to our will,
but we also want to master
ourselves
by making ourselves fit into
some ideal image
that we have dreamed up
rather than simply being
the
person God has called us to be.
We not only wage war against
others,
we wage war also against
ourselves
in the hope that we can defeat
and subjugate
our own internal conflicts.
True peace, however, is never
simply
the suppression of conflict,
whether this is a matter of
imposing our will on others
or trying to deny the conflict
within ourselves.
True peace involves emptying
ourselves
of our own agenda,
because unless we do so
there is precious little room
for Christ to dwell with us
and our hearts remain troubled
and afraid.
“We will come to him and make
our dwelling with him.”
This happens in many different
ways.
Christ dwells among us
in the
form of the poor and the needy,
or those who show us love,
or
those who try our patience.
Christ dwells within us
when
we find our hearts moved by love
or by the miracle of healing
and forgiveness.
Perhaps most of all,
Christ
dwells among us and within us
is the sacrament of the
Eucharist.
To return one last time to St.
Augustine,
he wrote of the Eucharist: “at
[Christ’s] own table,
the sacrament of our unity and
peace
is solemnly consecrated”
(Sermon 272).
In the Eucharist we gather
around the altar of the Lamb,
leaving our agendas and desire
for control behind,
and receive the living Christ
into our hearts.
We eat and drink the peace
that the world cannot give,
the peace given by the Lamb who bears our sins
away.
