After his resurrection, Jesus’ presence had dispelled his disciples’ near-despairing gloom and, in its place, they experienced peace, the peace that Jesus had promised them, as described in this gospel, a peace that no one else can give and nothing can destroy.
That gift of peace sums up what has been won for us by Christ’s life, death and resurrection.
It was prophesied by Zecariah, the father of John the Baptist, in the words of the Benedictus: “He will give light to those in darkness, those who dwell in the shadow of death, and guide us into the way of peace.”
So it is that, in each of the resurrection appearances, ‘peace’ is the first word Christ utters to his perplexed, fear-filled disciples; and, at his ascension, ‘peace’ was his final greeting before he was taken from their sight. The centrality of his gift of peace is borne out in the liturgy. At Mass, “Peace be with you” is the liturgical greeting used uniquely by a bishop; ‘peace’ is spoken of no less than seven times between the Canon and Communion; ‘peace’ is the liturgical greeting that immediately precedes the receiving of Holy Communion.
And, in the sacrament of confession, the words of absolution pray that God will grant us not only pardon but peace. St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, suffered for a long time after his conversion from what we would now describe as depression. The experience led him to conclude that imperturbable peace is the greatest of all gifts won for us.
But what Ignatius also saw was that this peace, the peace which neither the world nor anybody in the world can either give us or take from us, is not an absence but a presence: not the absence of anxiety and worry, but the presence in our lives of genuine, deeply-rooted joy and all-pervading hope. The “peace that the world cannot give” is the presence of Christ himself, made possible by his resurrection and ascension.
In this sense, he doesn’t so much give us his peace: he is our peace. And his peace – his presence – fills, informs and shapes every part of our living, and even our dying, because through his rising, death is no more. As John Donne has it: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”
Our dread of death, that worms its way into our lives, especially as we get older and more frail, is the greatest destroyer of peace. But that natural dread of death now rests on an illusion that has been dispelled by the resurrection.
Death is no longer the end, but the end only of the beginning. In a real sense, it is already behind us, not ahead.
When we were baptised, we entered with Christ into his tomb. But in that same baptism, we also rose with him to newness of life, a newness of life we experience concretely here and now in every act of selfless kindness, in every act of heartfelt forgiveness, in every act of profligate generosity. It is this new life that we celebrate and affirm every time we celebrate the sacraments. And, paradoxically, this newness of life is experienced not just in accepting but embracing death. At the time of our physical death, we can now look on the Crucified and Risen Christ and confidently go with him, not into “death’s dateless night”, but into endless day, where there is no past or future, because all is now, all is in Christ.
And yet, despite this ultimate reassurance, we spend much of our time seeking peace where it is not to be found. We spend much of our time, consciously and unconsciously, soothing our anxiety about both the past and the future; our anxiety about possessions and achievements (or, more likely, lack of them); anxiety about what people think of us (or what we’d like them to think of us); and a thousand other vain things.
It’s no coincidence that one of the most ancient prayers in the Roman Liturgy, just before Communion, asks God “to protect us from all anxiety” (ab omni perturbatione). And you can see why. As every Christian belief we hold is rooted in our conviction that God’s love for us can never fail, so every sin is rooted in the anxiety generated by our failure to believe that fundamental truth.
Again, it’s no coincidence that in the longest passage of the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord explicitly tells us: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on….seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”
The lesson couldn’t be clearer. We need no longer waste our energies worrying about the past or the future or fretting about hoarding or losing our possessions or worrying about guarding our reputation, winning every argument or keeping face at all costs. When beset by worry and anxiety, we can take heart from St Paul’s unequivocal advice, rooted in the peace granted to us in Christ’s resurrection: “Have no anxiety about anything, but with prayer and supplication, make all your needs known to God.”
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