Easter VI:C: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Rv 21:10-14, 22-23; Jn 14:23-21

 Today we are brought back to the night of the Last Supper. It is Christ's last meal with his closest followers. He wants to leave them a parting gift: Peace. "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." What does he mean by peace? Not what we usually think: "Not as the world gives do I give it to you."Christ's peace is lasting. It is interior peace of  the heart, which overflows into peace in families, in communities, in entire nations. It is the peace that comes from knowing without any doubt whatsoever that we are loved by him and that whenever we offend him, he will always be ready to forgive us. Only because Christ has given us this peace, by giving us faith in his love, mercy, and mission, he can command us: "Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid." 

If our peace were based on anything else: popularity, wealth, comfort, or power, it would be unstable, because all those things are vulnerable to change. But Christ's peace isn't vulnerable, because it's based on his love, mercy, and his mission to us to preach the kingdom he established by his death and resurrection. When he established the kingdom he defeated sin and death and that is why every time Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection he greeted them peace. He brought us peace between God and between human beings. That is also why St.Paul tells us in Ephesians that Jesus is our peace. Therefore, we exchange peace soon after the prayer Our Father at the end of the Mass.

We have all heard the proverb, still waters run deep. It's true for lakes and oceans, but it's also true for the spiritual life. The deeper our friendship with Christ, the more stable our lives become. Even when storms come and make waves on the surface of the ocean, the depths remain calm. Christ wants us to learn to live a deep spiritual life, so that we can experience profound interior peace.

A few years ago the Vietnamese Cardinal Joseph Xavier van Thuan [twahn] died in Rome, exiled from his homeland. Everyone who knew him during the last years of his life was impressed by his interior peace and joy. He was someone who had found Christ's peace, the stability that comes from discovering and clinging to the deeper truths. Before his exile he was serving as Archbishop of Saigon. After the Vietnam War, when the communists took over both North and South Vietnam, he was arrested by the communist authorities. He spent the next 13 years in prison, as the communists tried unsuccessfully to destroy the Catholic Church in that country. Nine of those years were spent in solitary confinement, in gruesome conditions and horrible privations. At first the authorities decided to have only two guards watch over the Archbishop, so as not to risk contaminating too many young soldiers with the Archbishop's Catholic ideas. But after a month, Bishop van Thuan had made friends with both of them and taught them some Christian hymns and prayers.

The officials were forced to rotate guards every week in order to avoid such embarrassing conversions. But the rotation strategy backfired. The holy bishop radiated Christ's goodness so powerfully, even in the midst of his emotional and physical suffering, that he would win over his guards without even trying, sparking their curiosity and interest in his "secret" - that is, his faith. In the end, they went back to assigning two permanent guards. It was better to lose two than twenty. That's the kind of interior strength and peace of mind that Christ wants to give us.

Most of us probably don't experience this peace as much as we would like to. And yet, we do experience it. When life's storms come, we know where to go. We know that Christ is there for us with his peace. We can experience him and his peace in the Eucharist and in confession. We can run to his Mother, Mary, the Queen of Peace.

The best way to grow in our knowledge of Christ is through prayer. Sometimes our prayer life gets stunted because our concept of prayer is distorted; we think of prayer as merely "saying prayers." Prayer is much more than that. The catechism defines prayer as a "vital and personal relationship with the living and true God" (#2558). Prayer can take many forms, the most common of which is "saying prayers". But there is also Christian meditation, or mental prayer. There is the Rosary, which was John Paul II's favorite prayer. There is adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. There is the perfect prayer, the Mass.

 

Today, when Jesus renews his commitment to us, let's take up his offer of peace by renewing our commitment to get to know him better each day, by growing deeper in our prayer life.