Tuesday – 5th Week of Easter

Gospel – John 14:27-31

Peace and Quiet

Mass at Mt. Tabor

One of the most difficult things I ever had to do was teaching high school boys how to meditate!  It was difficult but rewarding, required a lot of patience to get them to slow down, quiet down – not something teenagers are accustomed to do.  And then all it took to destroy the moment was for one kid to sneeze and the entire class, one by one, would respond with ‘God bless you.” (more for effect than compassion!).

We always talk about how much we want peace and quiet and yet, when we get it, too often we get impatient and uncomfortable with it.  We tell ourselves we ought to be doing something or we let ourselves get distracted.  We seem to be uneasy when all is calm and quiet; we just can’t handle silence.     

But too often, we seem to define peace as the ‘lack’ or ‘absence’ of something else.  Peace is the absence of war, the lack of noise or the absence of stress in our lives; peace is getting away from everything and everyone.  Given that perspective, then, peace is a sort of emptiness and not a presence of anything.  Is that it?  Is that all there is?  If so, then peace is just contentment, freedom from distractions; it comes across as being very passive and very temporary. We get away somewhere or we find a cozy corner away from people to get some peace and quiet.  It seems lonely and ultimately unfulfilling.

That is not the peace that Jesus speaks of today!   “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”  It is not the sort of peace we are used to; but it is the peace that we all need!  It’s not the peace that comes from absence; it IS the peace that comes from PRESENCE, Jesus’ presence in our lives and our acknowledgement of it.  Perhaps peace is realizing that Jesus is always with us and we have nothing to fear.  Perhaps peace is the realization of the presence of the Spirit within us.  And, far from doing nothing, that awareness and presence energizes us to action, to be Christ-like to others.

Whether we realize it or not, we all have moments when things are quiet and peaceful, when we are completely alone with our thoughts.  But how do we use that time?  Do we give ourselves the opportunity to quietly be in the presence of the Spirit?  Do we find God in the stillness of the moment?         

Great Spirit, gift me with the tools to seek and to find peace of mind!

 

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