The Peace That Abides

Do you have a “happy place”? You may not describe it with those words, but you know the idea: some particular place that gives you rest and refreshment. Maybe a favorite park or restaurant, maybe an ideal vacation spot, maybe even a location within your own home that you’ve carved out as a place to reduce stress and center yourself.

A “happy place” can be great to have, but unfortunately none of us can stay there forever. Whatever its particular pleasures, we each have to eventually leave that beloved café, that secluded beach spot, that backyard garden, and venture out again into the real world, the world of trials and anxieties and stress. Whether it’s the grind of home and work responsibilities, personal or family sorrows, or various worries about societal and global and ecclesial concerns, the return to real life can easily consume whatever rest and relaxation we did experience. What we really desire is not just a longer period in our “happy place” but a true and lasting peace.

Over Eternal Peace (1894) by Isaac Levitan

Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel should be consoling for precisely that reason: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.” Jesus’s peace is of a different kind than what passes as peace in this world. The best that this life can do is relaxation, the serenity of a “happy place”, pleasing in the moment but never lasting. Our world and our lives are proof enough that Jesus is not promising to make us carefree. This very Gospel scene occurs at a time of great anxiety – as Jesus is just mere hours from the agonizing experience of the Cross, as the disciples are filled with anxiety that he is leaving them. The peace of Jesus is somehow a peace that is deeper than mere peacefulness, a peace that can be experienced even in the midst of great trial and suffering.

The peace that Jesus gives is the same peace that he knew – the peace of abiding presence. Jesus underwent the suffering at Calvary with a peaceful heart because he knew of his Father’s love and because he was united with him at the very interior of his being. Likewise, the peace that Jesus promises his disciples is not freedom from worry or from suffering, but the peace of presence – of God’s love accompanying us, abiding with us even in the midst of suffering.

When we accompany another person in a difficult time, the best we can do is walk alongside of them, being a support for them. But God’s accompaniment is much deeper. It is an accompaniment not just with but within – the accompaniment of love and presence from the inside. For the one who loves God and keeps his word – well, just listen again to Jesus: “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” That is the peace of presence – that God is within us, animating us from within, strengthening us at a level deeper than any sorrow.

The teachings of our Catholic faith assure us that this idea is not metaphorical or just a cliché. We believe in what is called the doctrine of the Divine Indwelling: that when we are in communion with God by grace, the Holy Trinity truly dwells within us. What an awesome idea! And what peace that idea might give us, especially when we are confronted with a great sorrow or trial: to know that the infinite, almighty God, who holds all things in existence, who has a plan for all things in eternity, makes a home within our hearts. Surely, there is no suffering that cannot be endured, no challenge that cannot be confronted, no temptation that cannot be overcome when we realize that we face it not just by ourselves, but with the abiding presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who have made their dwelling within us. As long as we hold that friendship fast and secure, not losing it through mortal sin, then we have within us a peace that truly abides.

This idea that God makes his dwelling within us may seem very abstract until we remember that we profess the same idea in a different way in the Eucharist. At each Mass, following the Lord’s Prayer, just moments before we receive his Real Presence, we ask Jesus to look not upon our sins but upon our faith – our faith that he is really present there, under the appearance of bread and wine. And if we believe that Jesus is present there, then we believe that he is present also within us when we receive those Eucharistic elements. The Lord truly comes to make a home within our souls, nourishing us with his very Body and Blood. He comes to give us peace – the peace that abides, a peace the world cannot give.

Friends, the next time you visit your “happy place”, if you have one, enjoy that moment of rest and give thanks to God for it. But recognize too that its tranquility is superficial and fleeting. And, indeed, so it should be – for we have been created not for this world, but for another place whose happiness cannot be grasped in this life. It is only there, in the new and eternal Jerusalem, that our hearts will truly rest. In the meantime, in this life, the peace of Christ consoles us and abides within us to help us face the hardships that come our way, each of them a step along the journey toward that heavenly city. As we come forward in a few moments to share again in the Lord’s Paschal Banquet, let us ask the Lord with full and faithful hearts to renew us this day with his peace, the gift of his presence: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”

The Hour of Glory

Every person needs to learn how to tell time. As much as we might not like it sometimes, our world is governed by time – learning how to be on time, learning how to make good use of time, and especially learning how to tell what time it actually is. Every person has to learn these things, and so we help children master that skill. I’m sure many of us have helped children look at an analog clock to understand how the two hands pointing at two different numbers tells us something important. Perhaps some of us even recall being children and doing the same with our parents or grandparents. 

In the Gospel today, Jesus is helping his disciples learn how to tell time. Not the kind of time I’ve been referring to, displayed on our clocks and watches and phones. He’s helping them learn how to tell time in a deeper, more supernatural way – to tell time spiritually. Time plays an important role in the Gospel of John. St. John the Evangelist often refers in his account to the time of day that different events happen, and Jesus continuously talks about his “hour” – “my hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4, 7:8); “the hour is coming and is now here” (Jn 5:25, 16:32). Jesus is not referring to the hours that our clocks keep track of but rather the spiritual moment of when his divine mission will reach its fulfillment. Jesus wants his disciples to be attentive to the coming of his “hour,” the unveiling of God’s decisive action in the world.

Today’s Gospel is situated right as that hour is about to commence: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.” As we heard, Judas has left the Last Supper banquet and will soon return with guards and soldiers to betray and arrest Jesus. And thus, as Jesus says, the sequence of events has now been set in motion, all of the events of his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The die has been cast, as they say. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus refers to glory? We would understand if Jesus said, “Now will the Son of Man suffer and die, and in him God will show his love.” But Jesus says that this “hour,” long awaited and now finally arrived, is the hour of his glory. Can there be glory in betrayal and suffering? Can there be glory in death?

Who Among Us (2009) by Debra Hurd

The answer is yes. We know even in our human experience: if someone lays down their life for something worthy, for a noble cause, we see there is a kind of glory in that. All the more so when the one laying down his life is the Son of God! Jesus goes to the Cross not out of weakness or defeat but out of love for humanity, to effect our redemption. And because he does so, because God wants to reveal in Christ the true power of his love, he also raises him to new life. That is what the “hour” of Jesus is all about: to initiate a new time in the world, when all will come to see God’s redemptive love and the glory of his victory, even over the most terrible forces of our human experience. The love of Christ conquers all.

As Jesus faces his coming “hour” – an hour of both suffering and of glory – he turns his attention to his disciples. He gives them a new commandment: to love one another as he has loved them. As he enters into his redemptive work, Jesus gives his disciples a way of participating in that Cross, to suffer in a sense along with him in order to share in his triumph and glory. Love becomes for the followers of Jesus not just a nice sentiment or ideal but a means of participating in Christ’s redemption. When we love with the love of Christ – a love that in freedom does not shy away from being sacrificial, a love that is willing to deny ourselves for the good of the other – then we also share in the accomplishment of God’s plan to emancipate the world from slavery to sin and death. We can each become coworkers with Christ in unveiling the power and glory of God, helping to "make all things new" (Rev 21:5a).

To do this, we have to be able to tell time – that is, to read the times and understand them with the mind of Christ. We must look at our lives as governed not so much by the days and hours and minutes of the world, or even of our individual calendars and schedules, but above all by the love of Jesus. Each day we have opportunities offered to us here and now to share in the joys, the sufferings, the sacrifices, and the sanctifications that help to further the power and purpose of God in the world. Just like the early Christians, as we heard in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we can be the messengers of God’s Good News and the instruments of his redemptive action. Sometimes, his plan calls for us to undergo “many hardships,” as Paul says, in order for the love of Christ to be made manifest. But if we stay rooted in Christ, if we obey the Lord’s commandment to love as he loved – especially when it is not convenient or easy or popular to do so, even if it is sacrificial and self-denying – then we contribute to the coming of the Lord's kingdom where we hope to share in his glory.

Friends, the “hour” of Jesus, the hour of glory, which began two millennia ago according to the world’s time, is just as spiritually new and present and urgent today. What the Lord began with his Passion, Death, and Resurrection continues still for us, if we learn from him what is of greatest importance. Just as we teach our young ones how to understand the things of this world, may his words teach us today how to understand the commandment of the world to come: “My children… this is how all will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Six Little Words

Historians say that we live in “The Information Age.” We all know how technology has made information accessible at a level previously unthinkable – with just a few taps of our fingers, we have the ability to call up data on just about any topic. But with an increase in access to information comes an increase in the number of voices competing for our attention – opinions, viewpoints, hot takes from all sorts of people on all sorts of topics.

I have become more deeply aware of this in my four years working on a college campus. In my four years working on a college campus. Universities today say they are all about helping young people to form their own ideas and draw their own conclusions. But often it seems they are more likely to be places that you are bombarded with viewpoints and perspectives: from magisterial lectures and keynote addresses, to debates and demonstrations, and even things like the ins and outs of campus culture and the pressures of peer groups, and much more. Now, this is not always a bad thing; it can be helpful to learn from another's perspective. After all, even this homily is itself an attempt to represent another perspective – the Church’s viewpoint! But, sometimes, with so many voices all wanting to have a say, it can be a bit overwhelming, and we may be tempted to tune out even the important voices speaking to us.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us a reason for why his voice should stand out among all the rest, whether here on campus or anywhere else. At the end of the Gospel passage, he offered six little words tell us everything we need to know about him: “The Father and I are one.” If Jesus were a spiritual guru or moral exemplar, then his voice would just be one among many, wiser perhaps than most but with not inherently more authoritative than a number of others might be. But instead he says something no mere moral teacher would say: “The Father and I are one.” Those six little words tell us that Jesus claims an authority much higher than being one voice among many – indeed, he speaks with an authority higher than every other. He speaks as the Living Word, imparting the message of eternal life – he speaks with the voice of the Living God for he is one with the Father.

But not everyone hears this word, and not everyone accepts this message. The context for today’s Gospel, from the tenth chapter of John, makes this very clear. The religious authorities of Jesus’s day, the Pharisees and Temple authorities, heard Jesus’s message and resisted it because they did not believe him. Perhaps they were a bit like so many of us today – hardened into skepticism, overwhelmed by the number of viewpoints and the din of different voices. How often is the voice of Jesus speaking today simply lost in the mix? Certainly, we know our culture has in many ways grown hardened to hearing the Christian message and accepting it, but I’m talking also about its power and bearing in our own individual lives. Have we learned to distinguish the voice of Jesus speaking to us? Are we willing to act upon it? 

The Good Shepherd (c. 1800) by Vicente López Portaña

In order to hear the voice of the Lord more clearly, we first have to create room for it. If our attention is constantly being filled up by other voices, then it’s going to be hard for God to break into the mix. Each of us perhaps might do a little soul-searching this week about what kind of voices constantly occupy our attention. I can speak for myself in saying that often my ears are tuned in to rather ephemeral noise: entertainment, sports, politics, social media. These voices compete for our awareness, insisting that we stay up to date and in the loop, but often they can elbow out the voice of the Lord. Or perhaps the word of God is kept at bay by different voices: concerns about career and personal achievements; various anxieties of personal and family life; voices of doubt or discouragement, whether interior or exterior; voices that persuade us in some way or another not to strive for moral improvement, not to seek peace, not to forgive, not to be forgiven; and many more. In different ways, these voices can crowd out the voice of God speaking to us. We have to learn to lessen the degree to which these voices grab and hold on to our attention in order to be able to discern the Lord’s voice more clearly.

Once we have given him a greater opportunity to be heard, we then have to discern his voice speaking to us. There are certain fundamental ways we hear the voice of Jesus as Catholics: through the daily encounter with his Word in personal prayer, especially with the Scriptures; through the regular reception of the sacraments, hearing him speak to us especially in the words of the priest’s prayers; through the teachings of the Church, which carries Jesus’s authority as the Living Word into the present day; through the mutual love of one another, by which we help each other to grow in charity.

But still there are times when God’s word might feel absent. When that happens, I suggest if I may to return again to the six little words of today’s Gospel, so concise and yet so powerful: “the Father and I are one.” Jesus’s voice always speaks to us of the Father’s love, and it is always speaking to us of that love even when we don’t explicitly hear it or feel lit. The Lord’s voice can adopt different tones depending on what we need to hear in a given moment: hopeful and encouraging, urging us to change and conversion, speaking to us of peace. It can even be that the Lord speaks in a silent sort of way – by withholding from us the consolation or experience of presence. But even in this, he reveals always the same message of love: “you are loved, you have been created for love, and you will find the fulfillment of your desire for love only in relationship with Me and My Father and, ultimately, through eternal communion with us.” That is what Jesus, the Good Shepherd, means when he says, “The Father and I are one.” He reveals the Father to us, and makes known for us his love in this moment.

But finally, it’s not enough just to hear God’s word; we can’t just passively receive it or consider as just one voice among many. The Letter of James tells us to “be doers of the Word and not hearers only” (Jas 1:22). So how do we act upon God’s Word? Boldly. Of course, the substance of what we do depends upon what love compels us to do in the given moment and particular circumstance. But the voice of the Lord always asks us to be bold – not to be afraid to trust his voice, not to give in to doubt or skepticism that we really are hearing it – but to act decisively, directly, like sheep who recognize the shepherd’s voice and immediately move closer toward it.

Friends, our lives are full of lots of voices speaking to us – giving us information, opinions, perspectives, telling us what we should value, what we should believe. We can be tempted to discount all of them and just turn inward. But even if you tune them all out – heck, even if you take nothing else away from this homily – don’t disregard the voice of Jesus speaking to you today. “The Father and I are one,” he says. Let those six little words of the Lord speak to you, and penetrate your heart, and then boldly put his word into action. Don’t hesitate to do that which God is inviting you to do – don’t wait till next year, or next month, or even tomorrow, but trust in his love and act. Live out his “Word of Life” (1 Jn 1:4), so that others too may hear what you have heard and may come to know the sound of the Lord’s voice speaking to them. “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”