PEACE, YES! TROUBLE, NO!
6th Sunday of Easter Year C
May 5, 2013
PEACE, YES! TROUBLE, NO!
A decade ago, I was deep in study once again, somewhere in
the US East Coast. It was supposed to be a Catholic institution, but I soon
found out that most students were not only not Catholic. Some were even
anti-Catholic! One day, there was an imam who came to talk about his religion.
Of course, he did talk about it, and in the process also talked against my
religion, ever so subtly. I wouldn’t have minded that one, coming as it does
from someone like him. But when a “Christian” deridingly asked me whether
Catholics were Christians, I was definitely incensed.
I wasn’t in the mood for peace at that moment. I was
seething … like I was on so many other occasions in my life when my ego was
stepped on, hurt, abused, or otherwise put down.
It is hard to be at peace when being a Catholic nowadays is
equated with so many unsavory terms … when being orthodox means you are the
object of the derision of so many politically correct, but intolerant and noisy
minorities who accuse us of intolerance. (Look who’s talking!).
But today, whether I like it or not, I will have to talk of
the peace that comes from the Lord … the only one who really can give it
honestly, sincerely, truly, and fully!
Why, you might ask? Because He himself suffered violence …
against his person, against what he taught, against what he stood for and paid
for dearly with his life!
This is the only convincing peace that can only be given by
him who was made to suffer immensely for it … the peace that the world cannot
give … No … not even the Romans with their proverbial pax Romana that really
meant fear, control, and weaponries.
But the gift of peace from the Lord is associated with three
other powerful concepts to consider: love, keeping the Lord’s words, and the
coming of the Advocate.
Now that is reassuring. The peace that He gives is not the
peace that the world gives. It is the peace that is proven by deeds, by love
and by adhering to his words. More than anything, it is a peace that comes
along with a more important gift – the gift of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
sends in the Lord’s name.
Even now, I am often not entirely at peace. I am troubled
when that cult founded in the Philippines, designed to destroy the Catholic
Church … that cult whose apparent vision and mission and raison d’etre is
nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else but to talk against us Catholics continues
to attack us. But the worst is this … when fellow believers who claim to be
catholics, too, take the podium and say nothing positive about the
institutional Church, the Holy Father, or the official teachings of the Church,
especially in the area of morals. Sometimes I am outraged.
But today, I am convicted. And I am sorry not to be at
peace. For trouble is not what He has come to bring me and you, but peace. “Let
not your hearts be troubled or afraid.”
I would suggest we all claim this peace, this gift, this
promise. He is the only One who can talk convincingly of peace. But in the
meantime, there is one thing we can do – live on in His love, and adhere to His
words, and accept the gift of the Advocate. Anything less than this will mean
trouble for me and you.
Now, do you see why we are so troubled?
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