Peace Be With You

“Peace be with you” (Lk 24:36)

That Jesus spoke these words to his disciples after his resurrection is testified to in two gospel accounts: Luke and John.  John has Jesus repeat the salutation no fewer than three times, while showing them his wounds.  Surely this is the last thing the disciples could have expected to hear from the mouth of the master they had denied and abandoned.  We may wonder what these words mean to us today, knowing all too well the restlessness of our hearts in a world of unrest.

 Von Balthasar puts it this way: “What he brings back with him upon his return from the Cross, death and hell is ultimate, perfect peace.  A peace ‘not as the world gives,’ but a much deeper peace.”  In both Luke and John, the greeting of peace is accompanied by the gesture of showing the wounds: “Look at my hands and my feet” (Lk 24:39).  What have wounds to do with peace?  Von Balthasar comments: “It is precisely the deadly work that man have done to him which is the foundation for the peace that emanates from him.  Hatred has raged against him but his love had the greater stamina.”  We also note that in both gospels, this peace is intended as a gift to be given to all they meet, in the form of preaching “repentance and forgiveness of sins” (Lk 24:47).  Von Balthasar makes clear that this does not imply that we should always feel peaceful: “One thing the messenger and bringer of peace may not expect in this life is peace.  He must not expect God’s peace for himself, as a possession to be enjoyed by himself, or the world’s peace.”  This peace is a gift the world cannot give us, and we cannot create for ourselves.  Yet we are its ministers.

“Peace be with you” (Lk 24:36)

We speak these words of Jesus to our neighbors every day at Mass.  Some have learned to say: “The peace of Christ,” perhaps as a way of making clear that it is Christ’s peace that is shared and not one’s own.  From early childhood I was taught to say simply “Peace be with you,” just as Jesus did.  I must realize that I am not just offering a friendly greeting, but welcoming Jesus’ own words onto my lips.  I stand before the other like the risen One, like a wounded healer, giving the gift I have received, and receiving the gift that was given to the other.  In the name of Christ, as his designated representative, I give peace to the person beside me, to each member of the community, of the Church, of the human family.  It is an act of faith in the resurrection.

“Do not give a hollow greeting of peace.” (RB 4.25)

St Benedict has this to say in his chapter on the tools of good works.  I consider it to be one of the “hard sayings” of the Rule.  Not because it is unpleasant, but because it seems to place the bar so high.  How can I claim to have a fulness of peace to share with my neighbor?  What of my own restless heart?  What of the inevitable tensions, misunderstandings and sometimes serious breaks that occur in my relationship with others?  An impossible task, if I trust in myself, if I think that it is I myself who am the source of the peace I offer.  Von Balthasar remind us that peace is a gift of the Spirit, something that we have received, something that is ours as children of God.  “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’ (Gal 5:22).  He has all this, and it would be ungrateful to say that he does not have it.  It would be ungrateful to live and act as if it were something he had to elicit by his own efforts.  The Christian has peace.”  Challenging words.  They point to peace as a faith reality.  To give peace with Jesus’ own words is an act of confident hope that he can in fact make me an instrument of his peace, even (when necessary) without my knowledge or consent.

“If you have a dispute with someone, make peace before the sun goes down” (RB 4.73).

Another hard saying.  I remember Fr Bernard Bonowitz describing to us how monks in his community would sometimes avoid certain others at the time for sharing the peace, to spare themselves the embarrassment of being in violation of the Rule and the gospel.  Perhaps we would sometimes like to do the same.  As I recall, he told them they may not come to Mass if they were not prepared to share the peace with each brother.  I think he also told them not to come to dinner!  This was his way of forcing the issue, of not allowing his monks to hide from the gospel, or from one another.  Now, I wouldn’t go that far.  Forcing the issue can lead to breaking the bruised reed, in myself or in another, or in settling for something superficial.  But whatever we can do to restore peace, we must do, “today,” which means as soon as is reasonably possible, but sensitively, humanly, in the way best suited to the circumstance.  We must do it before it is too late, before the sun sets on the relationship.  And yet we must admit that there are times when peace is blocked, by something in me, something in the other, something in both of us that is not amenable to willpower.  Do we then live with habitual failure in the precept of the Rule and the gospel?  Do we excommunicate ourselves?  When we live unreconciled, we live in pain.  And this pain is instructive.  Consciously to face someone in the person of the risen Christ does not allow us to forget that we are at odds, does not allow us to sink into the complacent through that I have peace of my own, does not allow us to present ourselves blameless before God.  We are pushed to the realization that it is Christ’s peace, and only his, that we may give.  It is his words that we take upon our lips.  We speak to our neighbor as Christ, breathing life on his disciples, and through them, on the whole world.  To believe this is not to escape the pain by hiding from it or to avoid taking whatever steps we can toward reconciliation.  Rather, it is to dwell with it in the wounded body of Christ.

I close with Von Balthasar’s words.  These are challenging words, words that do not give an easy solution, but that call us to live our faith deeply.  May we ponder them with hope in the risen Christ’s gift of peace:
“Peace is the Christian’s element: he flows forth from peace like water from a spring, a ray of light from the sun.  He is a messenger of peace.  When he enters a house he ought to say, ‘Peace be with you,’ not as an empty wish but as a gift he brings with him.  He does not need to know (nor can he) how deep the peace is that he brings.  For it is the peace ‘which passes all understanding’ (Phil 4:7), which lies deeper than all our conscious unrest, deeper than all the tormenting of our psychological ego: ‘whenever our hearts condemn us,’ says John, ‘God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything’ (1 Jn 3:20).  God is greater than our hearts: that is peace.”

Image: Christ the Redeemer statue, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil