Is it on your mind? How can it not be on ALL our minds? PEACE. What is this elusive Grace that is the core of Jesus’ gift to His disciples?
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
[Jesus] said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
John 20: 19-23
Here is Jesus our breath of Life. Step into your sacred imagination and see Jesus standing before us offering us His Spirit, breathing upon us. Our Precious Lord wants to Shepherd us to verdant pastures of the Sacred Now. Here we will stand still in the fullness of His unapproachable Light, Joy, and Unconditional Love.
His Breath of Life will halt us in our tracks. Whatever track our zooming car of circumstances paved with its glorious challenges, pains, triumphs, doubts, questions and possibilities we might be driving on, Jesus will be the traffic orchestrator and Master of Suspended Animation. All things are potentiated between the beats of His Mystical Body’s mighty Heart.
The shackles of rules and conventions – the never-ending parade of human means at the perimeters of our havocked storms – are obliterated by the Healing Presence of Christ. We stand at the cross, speechless and motionless staring at the bloody pierced feet of our Master, Lord, King, Servant, and God who stops at nothing to unite Himself with us.
Peace is central to our inheritance, and consequentially essential for our path to holiness. Peace is the promise of transformation to an Earth in communion with our Messiah and through Him with each other.
Regardless of what we are seeing and experiencing in the moment, we can be assured that an era of peace will be upon us. Not an artificial one construed from human ideas, political efforts, alluring ideologies, or any charismatic leader who might show up with a perfect sounding solution. No.
Peace will be a supernatural gift of Grace that sets the world on fire with a Love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And from this God enkindling Love, a mantle of selfless, humble, serving will wrap itself around the shoulders of every willing man, woman, and child of every race and tongue.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatian 3:28After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.
They cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.”
Revelation 7: 9-10
From prophets and seers to the assurances of our Blessed Mother, promises of peace will be an earthly precursing experience of heavenly realities.
Join me in offering this prayer…
Father Creator of the ineffable stillness within your All in All, Jesus King of Peace, and beautiful Spirit of Renewable initiating Love, grab hold of our attentions. We bring you the weak, the suffering, and everyone who is ravaged today by war. Hear the cries of the innocent. Unite Your suffering Heart to the plight of people swept away by waves of violence, indifference, and hate.
Lord, we know that war begins and ends in the labyrinths of our hearts far from you. Illuminate the frigid darkness we harbor in our hearts. Fill us with a hunger for Your Perfect Peace and begin your infinite healing work in our hearts. Free us from fear, anger, and resentment. Grant us an infusion of Your Grace that impels us in each moment to seek the counsel of Jesus. Rapt in our sweet surrender to Your Divine Will, allow Jesus’ Wisdom to remove every obstacle that obstructs Your Love from freely flowing to us. Freed from our limitations born from our deficiencies and illusions of scarcity, rebirth us as tireless, joyful servants of Your Limitless Love.
Grant us oh Gracious and Good God this promise of peace. Father silence the drums of war, Jesus command every soul to seize the Truth and saving power of the Father’s Word made flesh. Come Holy Spirit and change the tempestuous winds of rancor into sweet, warm breezes full of nurturing hope, possibilities and Love. We ask all these things in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. AMEN
