As we approach
the great feast of the Ascension, we hear the Lord Jesus assure us yet again today: My peace I give you. Without doubt, Christ gives us his peace, and joyfully so, for that is what he came to
do; his Death and Resurrection are intended to bring us his peace, that is, the
magnificent joy and serenity that come from his perfect harmony with the will
of the Father. But will we truly be able to receive
Christ’s peace as he gives it to us? Peace, after all, cannot be simply handed
over like a peach or a book!
God
forces neither his peace nor his love on anyone; indeed, he cannot. By their
nature, such gifts cannot be imposed, since their very existence depends on their
receiver engaging in a free, interpersonal relationship with their Giver. The
Lord’s peace is not something that falls upon us in our passivity like the rain,
and suddenly we find ourselves wet. We have to cooperate in order to receive inwardly
this gift of peace since nothing can enter the inner sanctum of our soul
unless we actively throw open its door to welcome our peace-bearing Visitor. Certain
conditions are required of us that spell out what opening the door of our soul
entails.
The
gospel today heralds Jesus’ approaching departure from the earth in his visible
form. Again, and again the Lord Jesus, like a loving Spouse, whispers the one
word My peace I give you into his young Church’s ear. He stresses that this is the kind of peace that can come only
from him, the only genuine and lasting peace, based on a relationship of
intimate trust and friendship with him who is the Source itself of all truth
and life. A so-called “peace” as the world gives is at best a precarious
armistice or a cold war, or perhaps the lifeless “peace” of the cemetery.
Through their association with Jesus in faith and trust, the disciples have
access to the eternal archetype of true peace that exists only in God himself.
Whoever
keeps Jesus’ commandment of love will enjoy the love of the eternal Father.
Peace can come only from loving as God loves because for precisely this are our
persons structured. To be fully vibrant and alive our being requires loving as
much as food and drink. This is the first condition for enjoying true peace.
Hearing Jesus’ word and living by it is what gives us access to the hidden
divine life. When we listen to Jesus’ word as he listens to the Father’s word
we open our inner door to God, and then both Father and Son draw near to us, and
their Holy Spirit interprets for us all the truth Jesus has communicated to us.
The perfect harmony pulsating within the Blessed Trinity is the burning peace
of eternal Love. Indestructible, life-giving peace is the climate in which
Triune Love circulates. Though the gentlest of melodies, it drowns out the
rattle of death. Peace is the bond of love: among the Three Persons of the
Trinity, between Them and human beings, and among all the members of humanity—mystery
within mystery within mystery.
If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am
going to the Father, Jesus insists. The disciples must joyfully let go
of their beloved Lord Jesus in his tangible humanity so that the Son of God can
be reintegrated, as both God and Man, into the bosom of the eternal Trinity,
from where he had come to us at the Incarnation. Such a renunciation, such a letting go on our part of the
material form of Jesus also pertains hugely to the peace of the Church, the
Body of Christ, as a society on earth. The mystical reality has social
repercussions. The apostles and elders of the Jerusalem Church wrote a letter
to the Christians of the Church at Antioch to intervene in a difficult
situation that was dividing the community. They wrote: [To promote the peace of Christ among you,] we have with one accord
decided [these things].
The Church must be
a place of peace in a world without peace. Internally, too, the Church must
overcome problems that initially create tensions and can only be resolved in
peace under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in prayer to Him and in listening
to Him. Perhaps the most serious problem the Church faced already in the
apostolic period was this: how to create peaceful coexistence between the
chosen Jewish people, who possessed a millennia-old revelation from God, and
the new pagan converts who, as recent polytheists, found themselves
theologically back in kindergarten. The cultural and spiritual chasm between
Jews and Gentiles was enormous, and so the tension between them great and dangerous.
To achieve a truly
peaceful coexistence among Christians in Antioch, renunciations were required on
both sides, and the apostles’ lengthy consultations necessarily enacted such
renunciations in the end. We may call this ‘ecclesial asceticism’. The Jewish
Christians had to let go of certain laws they had considered essential to their
faith. They had to accept that the Gentile Christians did not have to abide by sacrosanct
Jewish customs, such as circumcision. And yet the Gentiles themselves had to
make certain concessions to the Jews with regard to dietary customs and marriages
within a certain degree of consanguinity, called unlawful unions in the text.
These were intensely contentious and divisive matters in the early
Church.
Perhaps
these specific objects of compromise seem very strange to us today, but the
situation and its resolution by the apostles instruct us about how to handle
all potentially divisive issues in the Church at any time. We should take an example
from this episode in Acts and ask ourselves what each of us must give up today
as a disciple of Jesus to ensure that, what with the divergent tendencies in
the contemporary Church, we will not come to a mere truce or standoff but that
the true peace of Christ will prevail.
Never will one side be perfectly right and the other perfectly wrong! Surely,
if we are moderately sane and have a touch of humility, none of us, whether leaning
to the right or to the left, firmly believes herself or himself to be in
possession of the whole Christian truth!
Only by
steeping ourselves in the peace of Christ can we listen to one another
fruitfully. Only rooted in Christ’s peace can we calmly consider and weigh the
reasons put forth by the opposite side, and avoid making an absolute of our own
reasons. This goal will require real renunciations in our day as it required
them in the early Church. Is everything
I believe truly essential and non-negotiable? Don’t I often tend to make
eternal truths, written in stone, even out of matters of personal style,
vocabulary, and taste in spirituality, theology, and liturgy? Only when we make
the necessary renunciations, that is, when we are willing to “trim the fat”
from our own personal opinions and preferences, will the peace of Christ be
granted to us as a community. Quite simply, peace
is not possible without giving up one’s prejudices and fixed ideas. There
is nothing more destructive in the Church than odium theologicum, partisan ‘theological
hatred’.
In truth, the only remedy to heal our tendency to assert ourselves against others and contribute to dividing rather than uniting the Church is to fall ever more deeply in love with Christ. If we habitually abide in the mystery of Christ’s love for us, in the unfathomable mystery of the Holy Trinity dwelling in us, then we will only want to cooperate in making the light of such wonderful love shine throughout the world, beginning with our own community. Then we will burn with the desire to love and serve, in Christ and for the sake of Christ, all those he loves and has redeemed with his Blood.
Photograph by Brother Brian. Homily by Father Simeon.