A recording of today's gospel and reflection can be accessed here.
Today’s gospel (John 14: 27-31a) comes right after Jesus’
teaching on the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in our souls through grace.
The focus in today’s gospel, however, is now on the fruits of that indwelling:
God’s peace and our liberation from anxiety; the synchronisation of our wishes
with those of Jesus as He rejoices in His return to the Father; and our need to
endure the one He calls so ominously the ‘ruler of this world’. Finally, He indicates
for the listening apostles the mark that distinguishes Him from the world’s Satanic
ruler: His obedience to the Father, His eternal fiat, His eternally redemptive ‘yes’
that overcomes the inner collapse and self-ruination of an infernal ‘no’.
My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives. What
do we find in this offer of Jesus? In our age, we are surrounded by the constant
talk of peace, although it offers very thin pickings. Why is this the case if
not that the only absolute peace, the only peace which is intrinsically the tranquillity
of order – to use St Augustine’s definition - is the peace of utter and final
reconciliation with God through Christ? The world gives peace as another good
to be traded in, a desirable item of merchandise; the peace of this world is only
a negotiated settlement that will inevitably prove temporary, even when it is dressed in the rhetoric of friendship. As one sage put it, every postwar period is actually a between-the-wars
period. At its best, the peace of this world may for a time shelter those
traumatised by conflict, and that is not to be deprecated or neglected. Perhaps it is even a way stage on the path to God. But it
cannot be mistaken for the reconciliation of Christ.
In fact, the peace of this world can be just as abused as
any other good of this world. At our worst, we ourselves may unwittingly prefer
the peace of this world, the harmony we want to enjoy with those around us, to
the peace of Christ. Paradoxically, to remain true to His peace we may need to
do violence to ourselves, or to contradict gently but persistently the world,
or else suffer the violence of others as did our Master. I came not to bring
peace but to bring the sword, Jesus tells us in the gospel of Matthew. Thus
speaks the one who declares Himself meek and humble of heart. And let us not
forget that we have heard in an earlier chapter of the gospel of John that
wherever the Master is, there must the disciple follow. These paradoxes are not
meant to confuse us; they are meant to strip away from us every self-serving
inner act of seeking our comfort and peace in places where we know deep down we
have no lasting abode.
My peace I give you, said Christ, the sword bringer,
to the apostles. And yet in His heart He surely saw in that same moment the vicious
persecutions they would undergo, the oppressive burdens they would suffer, the demonic
aggression that would confront them, and every ache and bruise of their afflicted
spirits that lay on what, to the apostles, was the unknown road ahead…
Unknown except in one regard: that He would be with them,
even till the consummation of the world. And this, now, this is the joy of the
road, and even the joy of peace: that despite the conflicts that surround us,
despite the buffeting of circumstance, perhaps the betrayals and the tragedies,
despite the inexplicable abandonment that may make us cry out My God, why
have you forsaken me? His peace remains.
Why is the peace of Christ so superior to the peace of this
world? Why, if it brings with it all the tears of the Suffering Servant, is
this the only peace we can long for? Because, in the end, only a peace rooted
in the eternal love of the Son for the Father and the Father for the Son, only
this eternal love that we call His Holy Spirit, brings us into the communion of
their love and home to our eternal dwellings. The ruler of this world wanted
peace outside that communion. Indeed, all talk of enduring peace that does not
have its origin and end in the communion of the Trinity is a peace that builds
not the Kingdom of God but the ersatz and temporary kingdom of the ruler of
this world. How can it be otherwise?
So, the enemies of Christ are not only the violent tyrants
whose bloodlust or whose indifference to destruction is patently obvious to
all. The enemies of Christ, those who serve the cause of the ruler of this
world, are also the soothsayers of all false peace, the clients of easy
accommodations, the mystical whisperers of seductive but superficial harmony
draped in the fading popularity of this world. That does not mean that we
should not be peaceable neighbours or seek to build better understanding, of
course. But it does mean we should not build castles in the air. It does mean that every time we do build such castles in the air - for we are weak and we love the comforts of this world - we are in
fact building castles of the infernal abyss, for as Simone Weil says, hell is occupied
by those who mistakenly thought they were choosing paradise.
In the end, we are not charged with thinking for others but
with attending to our own house before we shoulder the burdens of His mission.
In that regard, unless we are faithful – faithful by His power, faithful to His
peace – how will the false merchants of peace ever know that the Son loves the Father?
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