The real peace

THAT’S the peace that Christ gives to his disciples, distinct from the peace that the world may give. It’s a peace that serves as a constant consolation, amid understandable fears, to those who follow Christ on earth and continue with his redemptive mission. 

 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” Christ said. “I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid,” he continued. (Jn 14,27) 

 This peace is not an effect of an absence of war. In fact, there is some kind of war involved because it can only be had when we struggle against our weaknesses and sins, when we try to become more and more like Christ, when we strive to enter deep into the spiritual and supernatural world of God where we will have our ultimate state in life. 

 This peace is not an effect of an absence of troubles and conflict in this life. We can have all sorts of difficulties, challenges and trials in this life, but the peace Christ gives us can hold on. In the midst of life’s storms, Christ’s peace can stand firm and unshaken. It can serve as a safe anchor. 

 Definitely, this peace is not simply a result of ignorance, indifference and death itself. No matter how deeply involved we are in the complicated drama of our life here on earth, we can still manage to be confident and hopeful, firmly convinced that we are all in the hands of God. 

 The peace Christ gives us is a kind of interior tranquility that springs from the divine order of things. It surpasses human understanding and is oriented toward our eternal goal rather than just some temporal security. 

 Obviously, this peace will require spiritual warfare and a strong relationship with Christ. It involves surrendering to God’s will and embracing Christ’s teachings. We therefore should know very well the real source of peace, giving priority to our relationship with God. 

 Thus, we need to be truly identified with Christ to have peace in ourselves. 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. 

 The cross of Christ is all at once the summary of all our sins as well as the supreme act of love of Christ for us. It is both the tree of death and the tree of life. It’s where all the malice of man meets the tremendous mercy of God. Christ is asking us to carry the cross also with him. Only then can we have true peace that comes from Christ. 

 This is the peace that cannot waver even under the severe assaults of trials, difficulties and failures. It is the peace that involves a certain abandonment of everything in our life in the hands of God, even as we do our part of dealing with them. 

 We have to learn to receive and keep this peace that Christ gives us. We might have to pause from time to time to make this truth of our faith sink deeply in our consciousness and be the guiding principle of our life. 

 This is the peace that leads us to joy. They actually go together—“gaudium cum pace,” joy with peace, as one prayer in preparation for celebrating the Mass would put it.

The need for a daily agenda

LET’S hope that more and more people, especially the young ones, feel the need to have a daily agenda or a to-do list. This will assure us that, among many other things, we would be making good use of time, that we have a clear idea of the things we need to do, keeping us focused on our purpose and helping us to stay on the right track. 

 When we have this habit, we would be more likely to study and plan well the many things to tackle, thus enabling us to effectively prioritize what’s important. More than that, we would be more able to order them in such way that we not only pursue some immediate purpose but also, and more importantly, pursue the ultimate goal of our life which is to relate everything for the glory of God and for our sanctification. 

 Besides, this habit will give us more assurance of peace and a smooth work life even if there are unavoidable surprises along the way. We can feel a certain sense of dominion and an abiding sense of purpose. We would be more able to resist distractions that nowadays are getting plentier and more seductive. Yes, we would be more able to resist the usual dangers of idleness, laziness, loneliness, worries and the like. 

 And what kind of purpose can this be that would keep us going no matter what situation we find ourselves in? Of course, this could only be God, our love of God, from whom we come and to whom we belong. He is our beginning and end, our everything. 

 That’s why we need to sharpen our awareness of him, feel his presence and his abundant merciful love for us, learn to discern his will and ways in every moment, and know how to relate everything in our life to his ever-functioning Providence. 

 We need to strengthen our faith that only in God can we have the ultimate purpose in life. St. Paul said so: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10,31) 

 Before that, Christ himself told us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” (Lk 10,27) Nothing could be clearer than this as to what final purpose we have in life. All other goals and objectives we have in life should only be secondary and instrumental to this ultimate purpose of our life. 

 We need to find ways to correspond to this clear commandment of God to us. That effort will help us to broaden our mind, to continue making initiatives, to widen our perspectives, to deepen our hope and inflame our charity. It will help us to study things well, not only staying in the theoretical level but also going into the reality on the ground. 

 It will spur us to action always, not contented with knowing things alone or having some theoretical attitude in life. It will push us to develop a universal heart, capable of dealing with everyone and of reaching out to everyone, including the most difficult personalities and enemies. 

 It will enable us to have a sense of unity and continuity among the different elements and the different occurrences in our life, be they good or bad, favorable or unfavorable to us, etc. 

 When we have love of God as our abiding sense of purpose in our life behind our daily agenda, we would find it easy to go from one thing to another, no matter disparate they are from each other. We would find meaning in everything, including what we consider to be human disasters in our life.

Beware of certain “truths”

WE have to be careful with those truths in quotation marks. They may cite data and facts, they may even invoke some words of the Bible, but if they do not come from Christ himself, they can only give some appearance of truth, or some partial truths at best, that are mentioned mainly in pursuit of some self-interest, if not of deception and manipulation. 

 That’s simply because Christ himself said that he is “the way, the truth and the life” (cfr. Jn 14,6), the only one who can bring us to God. He is the only one that can provide us with the proper way to bring us to our definitive eternal life of perfect happiness in union with God himself. 

 Many people, especially many politicians and businessmen, can dish out a lot of verified facts and data. But this does not mean that they are leading us to the real truth and to God. Most of the time, they only lead us to their own interest and advantage. Yes, they can have some traces of truth, but that’s about it, that’s pretty much everything. Let’s neither forget that when the devil dared to tempt Christ, he also cited some scripture passages. (cfr. Mt 4,1-11) 

 To know the truth and to be in the truth are a matter of being discerning of what Christ in the Holy Spirit is telling and showing us. In short, we cannot know and be in the truth unless we follow what the Spirit tells us. 

 We just cannot rely on facts and data and a majority vote to be in the truth. Understanding truth that way, without the inspiration of the Spirit, would just lead us to be deceived in a way that can be most subtle and convincing. But the result or the effect of such misunderstanding of truth would only be greater division among us or some harm. 

 Somehow, we can verify the effect of such misunderstanding of truth just by looking at how there is now a lot of division and misunderstanding among ourselves in spite of the tremendous developments we have in the sciences and the technologies. We can have a glut of facts and data and we can make choices by majority vote, and still the truth would elude us. 

 Facts and data need a proper spirit for them to serve the cause of truth. We need to realize that truth in the context or setting of our human condition needs a proper spirit. Without considering the proper spirit, they can only be used—or misused—by all sorts of possible human motives that in the end may not be right for us, or may just be self-serving to some of us but harmful to others. 

 We have to realize that the pursuit for truth is a very tricky one. For that, we need to be familiar with the Spirit of Truth. He is the one who will show us the whole truth and not just some aspects of it. If we really want to be in the truth and not confused and lost in the many appearances of truth, we need to get in touch with the Spirit of Truth. 

 Christ himself said: “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” (Jn 16,13) No one can ever say he has the whole truth until he reaches where the Spirit of truth would finally lead him, and that is when God becomes “all in all.” (cfr. 1 Cor 15,28)