6th Sunday of Easter
By Fr. Victor Feltes
Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper, “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.” If through his Gospel Jesus is speaking these words not only to his apostles but to us today, then we can conclude several things: Jesus would give us his peace. This gift of peace is different from how the world offers “peace.” And it should grant us calm consolation and courage. So how is peace from Jesus different from this world’s peace? How have previous popes and great saints answered this question?
Three years ago, Pope Francis said one difference is in the manner which Christ brings about his peace: “This is how Christ brings peace into the world: through meekness and mildness, symbolized by that tethered colt, on which no-one had ever sat. No-one, because God’s way of doing things is different to that of the world. … The peace Jesus gives to us at Easter is not the peace that follows the strategies of the world, which believes it can obtain it through force, by conquest and with various forms of imposition. That peace, in reality, is only an interval between wars…. The peace of the Lord follows the way of meekness and mildness: it is taking responsibility for others. Indeed, Christ took on himself our evil, sin and our death. He took all of this upon himself. In this way he freed us. He paid for us. His peace is not the fruit of some compromise, but rather is born of self-giving.”
St. Pope John Paul the Great shared similar reflections in 2004: “The world is longing for peace and needs peace, today as in the past, but often seeks it by inappropriate means, sometimes even with recourse to force or by balancing opposing powers. In these situations, people live with the distress of fear and uncertainty in their hearts. Christ’s peace, instead, reconciles souls, purifies hearts, and converts minds.”
St. Thomas Aquinas highlighted this internal/external distinction about peace in the 13th century, saying “the peace of the world is a pretended peace since it is only on the outside: ‘The wicked… speak of peace with their neighbors while malice is in their hearts.’ But the peace of Christ is true, because it is both on the outside and inside. …The peace of Christ brings tranquility both within and without.”
Aquinas also noted that worldly peace “is directed to the quiet and calm enjoyment of passing things, with the result that it sometimes helps a person to sin: ‘They live in strife due to ignorance and they call such great evils peace.’ But the peace of the saints is directed to eternal goods. … The world gives peace so that external goods can be possessed undisturbed; but [Christ gives] peace so that you can obtain eternal things.”
St. Augustine of Hippo said likewise in the 5th century: “For [the worldly,] their aim in giving themselves peace is so that, exempt from the annoyance of lawsuits and wars, they may find enjoyment—not in God, but in the friendship of the world. And although they sometimes give the righteous peace in ceasing to persecute them, there can be no true peace where there is no real harmony because their hearts are at variance.”
It is the alignment of our hearts with Jesus Christ’s heart which gives us harmony and true unity with one another and the Lord. As Jesus says, “Come to me … and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. … My peace I give to you. … Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” Go to Jesus and learn from him. Align your heart with his and rest.
As St. Augustine once concluded, “Let us, therefore, beloved, with whom Christ leaves peace and to whom he gives his own peace, not after the world’s way but in a way worthy of Him by whom the world was made, that we should be of one heart with himself, having our hearts run as one, that this one heart set on that which is above may escape the corruption of the earth.”
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