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Peace

Dwarf

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.


In today’s gospel, Jesus tells His disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”

And the incredible power of that peace is what comes through in the first reading. Because of the explosion of the faith and the numbers of new converts around the time of Pentecost, we can falsely perceive that the faith spread easily in apostolic times, like fire across dry grass. Conversely, St. Paul compares the experience of birthing the faith in His audience to labor pains (cf. Gal. 4:19). Resistance to the Gospel, among Jewish and pagan leaders alike, is impossibly intense, and even where the Apostles are successful, the communities that form are not huge.

And yet, after being stoned and left for dead, St. Paul and his companions rejoice. The travel a wide circuit, and then return to the very location where the stoning occurred. They gather the Christian community together there and recount all the wonders that God has done.

It is not about a lack of hardship, or sheer numbers, that they are rejoicing. Their joy harkens back to Christ’s promise: “My peace I give you. Not as the world gives to I give it to you.” With their hearts united to their Master’s through the Holy Spirit, they see that through their fulfillment of His will, He is reaching those whom He has chosen, those who are prepared to receive His saving message. His will, the will of the sovereign Creator, is being accomplished, and this is enough to bring them great peace.

Is it enough for us to have peace as well? If not, the answer no doubt lies in drawing still closer to His Heart in our daily encounter with Him.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to reveal to you the peace He wants to bring to your heart. Ask Him to remove the obstacles of attachment to your own will and any priorities that do not align to His, through a powerful indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

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The Armor of God

Armor

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.


Divine Providence, and God’s role as sovereign of human history, is a curious thing in its interplay with human freedom.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus laments Jerusalem’s rejection of Him, and the fact that it will become an abandoned place as a consequence. His lamentation is full of love–He laments, not an inability to rule over Jerusalem, but to “gather its children.”

But at the same time, He tells those worried for His safety in the outlying country not to be concerned, because the place of His death is destined to be the Holy City.

The very thing He is lamenting, He has accepted as the destiny preordained by God’s plan.

God’s plan takes into account foreseen human decisions for evil and so channels them for His purposes of salvation, that it almost appears that He Himself is their cause.

It is easier to see this in Jesus’ life than our own, both because of His own foreknowledge, and because of the insight of hindsight. But through faith, we know that the same dynamic is happening for us as long as we give our lives to Him. Nor is it a delicate dynamic, subject to shattering at any moment that we may display weakness; the dynamic of God channeling evil for good is backed by His strength, not ours. As St. Paul says, “We know that all things work for good for those who love God.” (Rm. 8:28)

Speaking of St. Paul, all we need to do to tap into this dynamic, as He says in the first reading, is put on the armor of God: Righteousness, faith, the Spirit. If we stay close to Him in prayer and the sacraments, our life will in fact become a breathless love story of salvation, union with God, and happiness.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Think of some things in your life that are troubling you. Ask Jesus how those fit into His plan for you, as His death in Jerusalem fit into the great plan of salvation. For those pieces that you don’t understand, ask Him to help you trust in His knowledge of where they fit and His guidance of you accordingly.

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Destiny’s Child

Glorious Destiny

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.


“All things work for good for those who love God,” says St. Paul in a different epistle (cf. Rm. 8:28). For those in union with Christ, suffering is an opportunity to draw nearer to Him, become more like Him, and win further application of the infinite saving grace He merited on the cross. For those in union with Christ, triumphs and joys evoke gratitude, praise, and further trust in God. All circumstances, good and evil, increase love.

And Paul powerfully outlines the final result in today’s first reading. Adoption to the divinity through Christ. Every spiritual blessing in the heavens. Forgiveness of transgressions. The riches of grace.

And for this glorious destiny, per St. Paul, God chose us before the foundation of the world. A glorious plan, a glorious destiny.

What a contrast with Jesus’ message to the scribes and Pharisees in today’s gospel. He tells them, “The wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and Apostles; some of them they will kill and persecute’ in order that this generation might be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world.”

A very different destiny indeed.

It may seem unfair that, whereas for those of us who give ourselves to God with all our hearts, everything has been destined to work together for good, the destiny of Jesus’ audience here was to get heaped on them blame for the blood of all the prophets, even those who came before them. All things working, we may say, for not-so-good.

It is true that all of our destinies were pre-planned by God. And yet, God causes no evil. None. God is simply so incredibly powerful, so unfathomably sovereign, that He can create a rich race composed of completely and utterly free beings, fully capable of choosing between good and evil; foresee the choices of each free will; and–mark this–weave all of those free responses into a grand mosaic of history by far more impressive, more coherent, more pregnant with perfect meaning than any work of art ever conceived by the imagination of man.

As Lord of history, God is so powerful that He transforms not only neutral circumstances but even acts of freely chosen evil into key masterstrokes composing the rich and thoroughly beautiful work of art that is the glory of those who have chosen to love Him.

So, what are you worried about, again? 🙂

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: In your dialogue with Jesus, contemplate His ability as King of the Universe to weave all circumstances together for your good–to center, in a sense, all of history itself on your individual welfare, and yet to do this for each of His friends. Tell Him you adore Him and trust Him, and place all your eggs in His basket. Tell Him that you are setting your hand to His plow, never to look back.

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