Peace be with you: Escaping the Gathering Storm
Be Still on this National Day of Prayer: Wash Hands, Pray and Be at Peace…
Remember this formula: Love leads to Joy, which leads to Peace, which leads to the Patience we need right now…
The longest distance? From our own heads to our own hearts…
Picture yourself as a glass of milk. You pour in the chocolate syrup you crave to make your life taste good — but the syrup is stuck at the bottom of the glass.
The syrup is right where you need it but it’s basically concentrated, not impacting “the body” of your milk, stuck to the bottom…
Everything you NEED is now in that glass.
But something seems to be missing — or at least doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t seem to be working and it frustrates you. Why isn’t it working? You know you still need something more.
You don’t really need to add any more syrup (though many children will try to do so in vain, creating a huge mess in the process). The people buying more toilet paper than they need are kind of like those kids pouring too much syrup into the milk.
You actually just need a beautiful spoon to stir all that good stuff up, to make it mix with your cold empty milk…
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union…”
Bishop Robert Barron stresses:
“Those who hold to the resurrection of the body are those who are most effective at working for justice and peace in this world. If you are a complete materialist and secularist, you hold that everything and everybody, in the end, just fades away. But if you believe in the resurrection of the body, then everything in this world is destined for redemption. Everything matters.”
And every one. all part of a bigger plan. Including you…
“Where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.”
“Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.” — John Steinbeck
“O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love…”
Everything is a Gift. Anxiety and confusion are never created by God. Anxiety, fear of what may come next, is a fear of the future while confusion is a misunderstanding of what is actually known. The Great Divider is strengthened by fear and division.
Looking back years later, life makes much more sense. We realize things we thought mattered didn’t matter as much as we thought they did. We realize smaller, oftern overlooked things mattered more.
But in the moment it’s far less clear, certain and easy to understand. That is why we all need to rely on a cause greater than ourselves.
In HIS will is OUR peace…
“I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace,” Ephesians 4:1–25.
“for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
We lack true peace with others because we lack true peace with ourselves ….
We aren’t at peace with ourselves because we aren’t at peace with our Heavenly Father (and other people in our lives)…
The word “Religion’ is actually derived from the word RELATIONSHIP.
Jesus meets the Coronavirus…
On that day, as evening drew on, Jesus said to his disciples: “Let us cross to the other side.” Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in the boat just as he was… A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.
They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ The wind ceased and there was great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” They were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”MARK 4:35–41
In that famous above story (depicted in the Rembrandt painting above), we encounter, weather and endure the exact same things we are encountering in the fears related to the current Coronavirus Panic. These feelings are something Bishop Robert Barron calls:
“The spiritual dynamics of fear and trust.”
“Making their way across the lake, the disciples stand symbolically for all of us journeying through life,” Barron explains. “When they confront the mighty waves, they are immediately filled with terror. Similarly, when the trials and anxieties of life confront us, the first reaction is fear.
“Jesus is ‘asleep on a cushion.’ He stands for the divine power that is ‘asleep’ within all of us. He symbolizes that divine energy which remains unaffected by the fear-storms generated by the grasping ego. At a spiritual level, we see that this divine power successfully calms the waves: “He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’”
“If we awaken to the presence of Christ within us,” Barron concludes “then we can withstand even the most frightening storms. When, at the close of the story, Jesus asked the bewildered disciples, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ he is wondering why they have not yet experienced the change of heart necessary for living in the kingdom of God.”
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Romans 5:1
After Christ died and was resurrected, his disciples, the men who knew and loved him best, hid, locked in a room. Not unlike the way many of us right now are afraid of getting too close to someone else, afraid of the unknown virus threatening our lives. Father Michael Gaitley explains:
“Although he fully knew their disloyalty, cowardice and lack of faith, he didn’t even mention it. Instead, he spoke a word that CAUSED exactly what it meant: ‘Peace.’ ‘Peace be with you.’”
“Those words, coming from the lips of the Risen Savior, CAUSE peace.
They act with the same power as the words that Jesus has spoken in the garden: “I AM. However, instead of causing a whole cohort of Roman soldiers to fall to the ground, they cause fear, shame and sin to disappear just as the dawn dispels the darkness of night…he’s sending them. He’s asking them to be good shepherds who go out in search of lost sheep…. They’re to say to them, ‘Peace be with you’…. And carry them Home…. ’’
