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. (John 14:27)
When we look upon a pastoral scene, like the one to the left, we feel an overwhelming sense of peace. Though trouble may assail us from all sides, they all seem to slip away as we look and rest in the image.
I remember visiting an elderly woman in the hospital this past year. In addition to her blindness, she was in the last stages of cancer. She had just been told that she was dying, and had arranged to go into in-home hospice.
In spite of all of the grim news, she was at peace. She expressed how incredibly grateful she was to have lived as long as she did, and to experience so much within her lifetime. She was incredibly grateful to have loved and to have received great love from her family and friends. She was grateful to be able to return once more to her apartment and to die in the loving arms of her children. And, lastly, she was so very grateful to God for all of the above.
Not all would have reacted as she. Plague with the same blindness, with life-ending cancer, many would grow in bitterness and anger, flailing out at all, especially at God. The feeling of peace that the woman felt would elude those caught up in their feelings of fear, anger, and bitterness. Rather than just let go and allow God to fill us with peace, we are wont to dictate the terms of our peace, and, when it fails to happen, grow only more bitter, more angry, and more fearful.
In the gospel periscope above from the 14th chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus, well aware of the torture and death that awaits him that very night and the following day, is in an utter state of peace. Knowing full well that the lives of his disciples are going to be wrenched apart in the coming violence, Jesus wishes to convey the peace that dwells within him to them. In was being in a loving relationship with God the Father, that Jesus received this overwhelming state of peace. He assures the disciples that this same peace is just as attainable to them, by remaining in relationship with him.
In this gospel today, Jesus gives to us the same offer of peace he extended to his disciples. Though the world may come down crashing around us, if we enter into a deep, loving relationship with Jesus, we will find ourselves in a state of peace. This peace finds its origins in God the Father, the source of all creation, and passes through the person of Jesus to us. St. Paul, expresses this so well in his letter to the Romans.
“What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 35-39)
Even though we may flail in fear, anger, and bitterness against God, Jesus does not abandon us but continues to love us. All that is required of us to find the peace that eludes us in the world is to accept the love of Jesus and enter into a relationship with him. It is then that we will know true peace.
