Peace be with You

Peace.  What a wonderful concept.  What a wonderful thing to strive for.  But, it occurred to me lately that most really don’t want peace.  What most want is a stress free life — two very different ideas.

There is a friend in my life who is going through a difficult time.  As she becomes more and more her own person she finds that more and more there is conflict in her life.  She is both happy with her new found strength and courage but at the same time very conflicted and sad because saying no and speaking the truth of her heart has caused the loss of some relationships and the unsettling of many others.  I feel for her and understand what she is going through because that has been me for the last couple of years.  And just as friends were there to support me through this change in perspective, attitude and therefore relationships; I know its important for me to be there for her.  Just like me, she says she wants peace, she prays for peace; but really what she wants are these conflicts and difficulties to disappear.

Each Sunday, each time we go to Mass there comes a point between hearing and reflecting on the readings and our feeding on the Bread of Life that the community is directed to extend to one another “a sign of peace.”  The exact words we hear are:

Priest:  Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles:  “I leave you peace, my peace I give you.”  Look not on our sins, but the faith of your Church, and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom where you live forever and ever.

People:  Amen

Priest:  The Peace of the Lord be with you always

People:  And also with you

Priest:  Let us offer the sign of peace.

Each week we go through this, and just like so much of our responses in faith and in life they become automatic.  We stop thinking about what we are doing, what the meaning is behind the words and actions.  When we turn to our neighbor we are not offering them a stress free life.  It is not our power to give.  The words of the priest are:  the peace OF THE LORD be with you…  It is God’s peace you are praying for to those you extend your hand to.  So, lets stop and think about it.  What is the Peace of the Lord?

Without boring you with a 100 page introduction followed by several volumes of explanation, let me try to be concise.  Have you ever met someone who is in the midst of some major tragedy or crisis and while they are fully aware of what is going on and are appropriately sad, concerned or upset they also seem… ok.  Its like they seem to know something we don’t know that allows them to handle the situation well.  God has been allowed into their lives and hearts to life them up and carry them through their difficulties.  This happened to me once. 

Yesterday I spoke of my gratitude for my daughter and the young woman she has grown up to be.  Well, in her first hours of life there was grave doubt by the medical community who assisted in her birth that she would survive to the next day.  I had preclampsia in the final weeks of my pregnancy.  When it was diagnosis they did an ultrasound and pronounced that we had a health baby, approximately 6plus pounds.  The sent me home to complete bed-rest and scheduled to induce labor on July 9th (due date was July 23rd).  The evening of July 3rd my water broke and at 3:06pm July 4th a weak 4lb, 14oz baby girl came into the world.  The weight loss?  They figured in the 4 weeks my uterus was shutting down and she was starving.  Had she not come when she came…  They put me in the maternity ward in one wing and her in Neonatal Intensive care on another side of the hospital.  I found out later that everyone prepared for the worse.  Through the process of deliver I required 140 stitches and I was still recovering from the general delivery and all but I found the strength and drive to walk several corridors to get to where my daughter was several times a day to feed her the 2 – 4 ozs she would take.  Not once did I doubt that everything would be fine.  Not once did I think that this experience would end anyway but happy.  I trained for a while as a nurse and worked Intensive Care so I completely understood what the doctors and nurses, and specialist were saying to me.  I took them seriously and did everything I could but I just knew in my heart that everything would be fine.  I realize now that God peace was holding me up through all this.  I still had stress, fear, disappointment (when I was sent home without her) but my eyes were on her and the life I wanted for her and God’s peace was with me.

We have to get out of this mindset that to be followers of Christ, to be believers, to be people of faith means that we will have a worry free, stress free, complication free day, week, month, year, decade…  What it means is that we end up inviting stress, complications and difficulties as we stand firm in our faith facing the cultural tide of selfish, prideful immorality.  What it means is even though we will continue to be misunderstood, challenged and maybe even despised, Christ will stand with us often carrying us through the ordeal. 

So, the next time you pray for peace or offer the peace of Christ remember that what you are hoping for is not that the difficulty will be eliminated from your life but that you or those you pray for are bathed in the love of God as the situation is dealt wit  I remain, your servant in Christ,

Theresa

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Tags: conflict, peace, Catholic Mass, Sign of Peace, Preclapsia, Child birth

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