Peace amid worldly tribulations

THE readings of the Mass on Tuesday of the 5th Week of Easter (cfr. Acts 14,19-28; Jn 14,27-31) happily show us that we can have peace even amid the most terrible predicaments in our earthly life as long as we follow Christ.

In the first reading, we see Paul and some of his followers proceeding to do a lot of preaching in many places, converting many people to Christianity, and establishing Christian communities in these places despite some severe persecutions they had to go through. Though he suffered a lot, he certainly enjoyed peace. Otherwise, he would not do what he did.

In the gospel, we are told that it is Christ who gives us the true peace, a peace that the world cannot give. It is a different kind of peace which is not simply a matter of not having any worries, problems and the like. It’s a peace that only God can give, a peace that can handle any kind of conditions and situations that we can be in.

We have to understand that peace, like anything else that is of true value to mankind, can only come from God who gives it to us through Christ, the Son of God who became man to save us from our sin and our doom. Peace, which characterized the life of our first parents before the fall and thus they enjoyed it effortlessly, can only be attained by us now after some struggle, following Christ’s example.

That is why it can only be had if we get it from Christ our Redeemer, who won it for us through the cross. He himself said so. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (Jn 14,27)

There, we have in a nutshell where to look for it if we want true peace. It’s not a peace that comes as a result of some human effort alone. It has to come from Christ who actually gives it to us abundantly, but which we have to receive and keep faithfully. The problem is that we often mess it up, and follow our own version of peace.

In that famous Latin line about peace, “Opus iustitiae pax” (Peace is the work of justice), a major distortion is made because justice is understood mainly as human justice, relying simply on our legal and judicial systems, our culture and other social norms.

It’s an understanding that does not go far and deep enough to reach its true source who is God as revealed to us in full by Christ. It simply depends on our human consensus which can go in any which way, depending on the changing circumstances.

And so, with the foundation of peace and justice unclear or mainly rooted on shaky grounds, true peace and justice will remain elusive, and can even produce the opposite effects while pursued under their name. It’s truly ironic!

Thus, in the psalms, we can read the following: “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with you, which frames mischief by a law?” (94,20) Christ himself also warned us about this: “A time is coming when the one who kills you will think he is serving God.” (Jn 16,2)

We need to be truly identified with Christ to have peace in ourselves and in everybody else all over the world. It is a peace that comes as a result of reconciliation. It therefore involves repentance, conversion, struggle, that Christ has shown to us by embracing the cross and dying on it.