Thanks
to Fr. John Kennedy for inspiring this reflection.
Peace is something we like to window shop "just looking for peace."
Humanity seems to shop for peace.
Millions shout to sign a petition and are silent on human trafficking. We fight to define love and fail to bring peace to the abused and neglected. In the U.S., we fight
over bathrooms and in other parts of the world people fight to remain alive.
Human peace hasn’t changed the world.
True peace is in Christ. Peace
I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
And, Jesus didn’t
bring the change people expected.
Many of Jesus’ disciples
left because his teachings were not what they thought they should be.
Those closest to Jesus
doubted, locked their doors in fear, huddled in despair and tried to go back to their
old life. And, they witnessed the empty tomb.
His death on the cross and
resurrection was victory over sin. It was not the overthrow of the tyranny of
the Roman Empire. The people wanted revolution, insurgency, upheaval, rebellion
and riots in the streets.
Jesus was not the messiah
people expected.
Instead, Jesus brought
peace. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
It seemed the early Church
may have forgotten this. Some who had come down from Judea were telling
the Christians at Antioch they could not be saved unless they were circumcised.
Who were the Judeans? How could they say what the Lord requires for salvation? The did not bring peace but unfeeling, hard-hearted and meddling directions.
Instructions from their idea of God. A God who wanted a certain amount of
flesh from your body before you can be saved.
It sounds hard. It doesn’t
sound like peace. (A piece of flesh is not the peace of Jesus.)
Peace is found in the truth
of Christ. This peace should be found in the Church.
Christ’s Church should be a
vision of heaven. It should gleam with the splendor of God. It should be
radiant in the word of God; jeweled by the Holy Spirit and the sacraments. It
does not need the sun or the moon. Its light is God and its lamp is the lamb.
The Church is not there
yet; because, it’s still in this world. Like the Judeans, believers still
identify the will of God with the human will. God’s will is tagged to patriotism,
hierarchism, capitalism, feminism, legalism, or the (-ism) of financial
success. God’s will is given as a reason to leave a spouse, break a promise,
and even kill.
We keep telling ourselves,
we know the way to peace. We tie peace to the human will and neglect the will
of God.
Human nature ignores peace. Believers
can fall into the trap of forgetting Christ to worship the temporal and
cultural fantasy that exists in humanity’s turmoil. “Whoever does not
love me does not keep my words.”
Humanity's idea of peace doesn’t
bring change to the world. We're just shopping.
Real peace is the peace Jesus promised. The Father will send an advocate, the
Holy Spirit that will give peace “not as the world gives peace.”
On the Epiphany, Pope
Francis’ ended his homily with a prayer that all would find “the courage to be
liberated from our illusions and our presumptions, and to seek courage in
the humility of faith.”
My Brothers and Sisters this is where we find the peace of Christ.
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