Tuesday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 12, 2020

John 14:27-31a

Jesus said to his disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe. I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me, but the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me.”

Jesus offers real peace, which he insists is distinct from what the world offers.  When Jesus and, later, St. Paul and St. John, talk about “the world”, they are referring to everything that tugs at us and tries to compel us to look away from heaven.  It is the temporary, the sordid, the sensual.  It is secular society, from which God has been purged to allow greater individual “freedom”.  It is a siren luring us on to the rocks of sin and destruction.  The “peace” which the world offers is a lie: that if only we buy one more thing or pursue one more activity, our hearts will rest easy.  But in reality, the more we have, the more we want.  The peace of the world is not a swimming pool in which we can drift happily, but a raging whirlpool in which we must always struggle, and ultimately fail.  The peace the Lord offers is the cessation of every desire.  He alone is the true object of our yearning: our hearts were made for him alone.  We feel this increasingly as we practice self-denial and mortifications.  When we have cleaned out our hearts with the help of his grace, when we expel the world from them. they are capable of receiving him and he takes up his abode there.  Thus, the Prince of Peace reigns from our very interior.  There is nothing left to desire, no more ambition to fulfill.  Christ alone is our peace.  It is how we are made.  As St. Augustine famously says in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.”

The Church uses the Lord’s words at Mass, in the prayers following the Eucharistic Prayer: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”  After speaking them, the priest addresses the congregation, one of the few times during the Mass he actually does so: “The peace of the Lord be with you always.”  And the people respond, “And with your spirit.”  It is the peace of Christ that is offered through the priest.  This is not a good wish for someone’s well-being or success, it is a prayer for the spiritual growth of the Christian that Christ may fully dwell in him.  When the people exchange this with one another, it is likewise a prayer for the other person’s peace in Christ.  Unfortunately, the exchange of “the peace” at Mass has devolved into a purely civil ceremony and wishes for the other person to feel happy.  It has become a sort of recess period during which people turn their attention away from the God who is sacramentally enthroned upon the altar.  Ironically, in many places it has become a distraction from the Source of the peace which we allegedly desire for one another.  Still, this exercise is optional, and a person is free to continue to pray, directing his attention to the altar.

Let us cast aside the demands of the world, the itch of fallen human nature, to seek fulfillment and peace in false gods and to find complete joy and rest in the love of God alone.