If I asked you to show me a picture of what peace
looks like, what would you come up with?
If I asked that to someone living in the
United States in 1865, they’d probably show me an image from the Courthouse at
Appomattox, Virginia, with Confederate General Robert E. Lee, dressed in his
finest grays and Union General Ulysses S. Grant, all dressed in blue, seated
across a table from each other, Lee signing articles of surrender, ending four
years of a bloody civil war.
Or more recently, the people living August 1945,
maybe some here this morning remember, the image from Times Square in New York
City, throngs wild with joy amid a ticker-tape parade for “V-J Day” -
celebrating the news that Japan had surrendered, ending six years of a horrific
world war. Or The image of a headline
shouting PEACE! Or the scene a few weeks later, atop the battleship USS
Missouri, Japanese Emperor Hirohito at a table with General MacArthur looking
on, signing articles of surrender.
In each case, there was a conquering,
victorious army. And a vanquished one,
utterly defeated.
And in each case, with each surrender, we had
peace. For a little while, at least. We tend, I think, to see peace in terms of
the absence of conflict, absence of war.
Thing is, this kind of peace is, as we all know, short-lived. It lasts until the next outbreak of conflict,
of war.
Just since the end of World War II, in our
own national history, we’ve been engaged in one military operation after
another. Korea. Vietnam. Grenada.
Panama. Kuwait and Iraq. Bosnia/Herzogovina. Afghanistan. Iraq again. Syria. And that’s just the U.S. conflicts. Not to mention all the other hot spots and
conflicts in virtually every corner of the globe.
And it’s not just armed conflict. Show me a major city that goes a day without
a violent shooting or stabbing. Show me
a country that hasn’t made legal abortion the law of the land. There aren’t many anymore. There are a few nations that have outlawed
the death penalty, but ours isn’t one of them.
And it’s not just violence. Look at our culture, our society, and the
divisions within our society. Seemingly
escalating divisions. Black/white.
Muslim/Jew/Christian.
Democrat/Republican.
Or show me a family that doesn’t have at
least some distance or coldness between some family members, if not open
hostility. Or an extended family that
hasn’t had one or more marriages rocked by the pain and bitterness of separation
and divorce.
And for so many people, it’s personal
conflict and strife. How many people, young
people especially, are at peace with who they are? We have an epidemic, right here in our
community, of young people dying from heroin overdoses. Epidemics of other addictions – alcohol,
gambling, pornography, tearing apart relationships, and lives. We have a silent epidemic of young people
suffering from eating disorders, wounded by a culture that preaches anything
but being at peace with yourself.
One might argue, and it’s hard to refute I’m
afraid, that the natural state of humankind is to be in a state of
conflict. Going back to Cain and
Abel. Even before that – as Adam and
Eve, dissatisfied with the perfect life they had, curious about what that apple
tree was all about. Peace, to be sure,
seems foreign, remote, at best a time-out in among the disorder and conflict in
our lives.
Into this world of conflict, enters Jesus
Christ, with a powerful promise to His disciples the night before His passion,
preparing them for when He would not be with them any longer, and a powerful
promise to you and me today. He promises
the gift of the Holy Spirit. And He
promises - peace.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to
you. Not as the world gives do I give it
to you.” Yes, the Lord’s peace is very
different than any fleeting peace the world promises.
It’s important, I think, to understand where
all the conflict, violence and war come from.
At the end of the day, they come from within. From within individual people. Our Lord says as much in Matthew’s Gospel,
chapter 15: “from the heart come evil thoughts,
murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy.” That’s called, of course, sin.
Now many of the things I listed are the
result of what we call “social sin” but what is “social sin” but the result of
the action, or inaction, of a whole lot of people. And much of our conflict truly comes from
others, outside our control.
But while we have limited power to fix the
social sin in the world, and we have almost no power to fix others’ faults and
sins, we’d be putting the cart before the horse if we weren’t first to go about
addressing the sin that comes from within ourselves.
For if we’re honest
with ourselves, not all, but so much of the conflict, the confusion, the lack
of peace in our own lives we bring on ourselves by doing it our way, by
ignoring His word, by seeking the glamour and empty promises of this
world. Frank Sinatra sang “I did it my
way” but the message of Jesus Christ is this: if we want true peace, true joy,
do it His way.
The Lord’s peace, therefore, is first about
peace within. About rearranging, rightly
ordering all in our lives that is disheveled, disordered, messed up.
And thinking back to that image of Lee and
Grant, Hirohito and MacArthur, the Lord’s peace comes ironically, from
surrender. Surrender to Him. Surrender to living one’s life with Jesus
Christ at the absolute center. Surrender
to living one’s life in accordance with His commandments, His words.
“Whoever loves
me will keep my word,” He says, “and my Father will love him, and we will come
to him and make our dwelling with him.”
He promises peace to anyone
who lives in intimate relationship with Him, who surrenders their life to Him,
who places all their trust in Him. To be
sure, our Holy Father Pope Francis speaks often of the devil, and make no
mistake, the very last thing the devil wants is for us to be at peace, with
ourselves, and with others. The last
thing he wants is for us to surrender ourselves to the power of Jesus
Christ.
But Our Lord promises that
if we do so, we have nothing to fear, no reason to let our hearts be
troubled. Complete faith and trust in Jesus
Christ, then, is true peace. He promises
us this.
And the first step is to be
reconciled to Him. To admit we are far
from Him, that on our own we’ve messed things up, that we need Him to step into
our lives and make things right. To let Him find us, shower us with His mercy,
shower us with His grace.
Just yesterday, Pope Francis
spoke about this. “Often we believe our
sins push God away from us,” he said, but “in reality, by sinning we push
ourselves away from Him, but He, seeing us in danger, keeps searching for us.”
He went on to say, “Let
us accept, therefore, the invitation to be reconciled to God to become new
creatures and to be able to radiate His mercy among our brothers and sisters.”
Brothers and sisters, we are
especially blessed to have the Sacrament of reconciliation, where we can
surrender ourselves to His loving mercy and be confident in His forgiveness and
grace. And we are blessed to have
Eucharist, [which our young sisters and brothers will soon share for the first
time], the very Sacrament of unity with Our Blessed Lord, the very Sacrament of
surrender to Him and His grace and peace for our lives.
Sisters and brothers, we all know, I’m sure, one
or more people who live very peaceful lives, even in the midst of violent
storms raging about them. Jesus Christ
promises us today that we, too, can live like that. If only we examine our lives, all the areas
of our life that are unpeaceful, at conflict, or frankly messed up. If only we give our lives and all our messes
over to Him, and be reconciled to Him.
If only we trust in Him. And we
will have, as St. Paul writes, “the peace of God that surpasses all
understanding, which will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus,” our Lord.
