The Gift of Peace

Gospel: John 14: 27-31

In today's Gospel portion Jesus promises the gift of peace to us, and we look around in search for it.  The world is continually at war as it has been since that time.  Christians are ever at odds with each other as they have since these words were uttered.  Where is this promised peace?  We might well understand why the world lacks peace and is ever at war, but certainly the Christian community of Jesus would be a place of peace, and yet it is not.

Jesus utters these words on the night he was to be arrested, sent to prison, tortured, put on trial, and eventually executed the next day.  In the midst of all those events Jesus demonstrates remarkable peace and calm.  There is utter trust in God, and there is complete serenity of resting in the truth.  Jesus had fulfilled his mission of being the love and mercy of God in the world, and that mission would carry on in this last day to his very last second on earth.

This is the peace Jesus promises to us.  It is the peace he has - union with God, being God's mercy and love in the world, resting in the truth of a clear conscience that one has lived for the care and loving kindness of others.  The peace we seek and which was promised to us is an interior one.  It is a peace which can animate a fractured world and an acrimonious Christian community if we allow it, for it is the peace simply of knowing God's presence, and knowing that is enough.