The peace the world cannot give

From today’s Gospel:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. (John 14:27)

So often we look for peace or ask for peace and we don’t find it. The peace we are looking for cannot be obtained through any means other than direct personal contact with Jesus Christ, a contact which is established and maintained through prayer, especially meditation and the Jesus Prayer, and through the sacraments of the Church.

Sometimes even at Mass we don’t find peace because we use our time and our energy completely focused on the rubrics of the liturgy and on its stuff—the vestments, the ceremonials, the incense and even the music, and do not use the Mass as a means of us encountering the living Jesus Christ through the word, the homily and the sacraments. When I was the director of our college choir, one of my priorities in picking music was to select music that would help students develop their personal relationship with the Lord. Without that, nothing has value.

A couple of quotes for you to consider:

“People concern themselves with Christian upbringing but leave it incomplete: they neglect the most essential and most difficult side of the Christian life, and dwell on what is easiest, the visible and external.

     This imperfect or misdirected upbringing produces people who observe with the utmost correctness all the formal and outward rules for devout conduct, but who pay little or no attention to the inward movements of the heart and to true improvement of the inner spiritual life.”   Theophan the Recluse in The Art of Prayer, p. 164

Perfection consists in doing the will of God, not in understanding His designs. . . . Whether it be in meditation, contemplation, vocal prayer, interior silence, or the active use of any of the faculties, that which God wills for the present moment is best and all else must be regarded by the soul as being nothing at all.  J.P. de Caussade, Self-abandonment to Divine Providence, p. 9 of the online edition.

Keep your heart fixed on God, find him right here right now in this present moment, and give yourself to Him in love, and you will find that peace Jesus gives to us, the peace which, according to St. Paul, “surpasses all human understanding.” (Phil. 4:7)

God bless you.

He saved me because he loved me.

We continue our exploration of the psalms, selecting images and verses that speak about the many ways God cares for us. But before we turn to the psalms today, let’s consider lines from the Gospel for today’s Mass:

 “. . . I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” (John 14:2-3)

·         This is a particular wish of Christ, to have us be with him for all time. He also prays for this in the High Priestly Prayer (John 17):

“I pray that those, also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (v. 24)

·         Jesus prays this pray for those who will believe in him through the word of his disciples—in other words, he prays for us in these blessed words. This is our destiny; this is where the trajectory of our life will ultimately lead us, despite all the dark valleys and times of weakness and failure. This is how he cares for us. It is especially poignant to realize that Jesus prays this prayer for us shortly before He was going to the garden to be betrayed and arrested.

Psalm verses for today’s reflection:

In Psalm 18, the Psalmist calls out to the Lord for deliverance from the sufferings he is undergoing:

The waves of death rose about me;

the torrents of destruction assailed me;

the snares of the grave entangled me;

the traps of death confronted me.

In my anguish I called to the Lord;

I cried to my God for help. (18: 5-7a)

·         This psalm is dramatic and epic in tone. The Lord answers the plea for help in extraordinary and tumultuous ways, and this is how He cares for His beloved:

From on high he reached down and seized me;

he drew me forth from the mighty waters.

He snatched me from my powerful foe,

from my enemies whose strength I could not match. (17-18)

. . .

He brought me forth into freedom,

he saved me because he loved me.  (v. 20)

·         Remember this the next time you find yourself in difficult, perilous or oppressive circumstances, or when you feel that the temptations and trials of life are too powerful and overwhelming for you.

God bless you.