John 14:23-29
The fifty days of the Easter Season offer us again the opportunity to penetrate the depths of our faith. We are invited to enter more actively into the most profound realities of a Crucified Christ and Risen Christ. The Pascal Mystery, the saving Death and Resurrection of Jesus is set out before us. There is no clearer message of love. We are asked to bring this experience of love into our hearts. In this encounter, we continue to answer the most fundamental question in our lives, who is Jesus for us?In today’s gospel passage from John, Jesus is talking about his return to the Father and the double gifts of the Paraclete and peace. The teaching of Jesus is reduced to its simplest and most stark terms. It is all about the passionate call of a loving God even in the midst of our sinful brokenness.
The peace Jesus is talking about in not the absence of conflict or struggle with life’s steady encounter with evil. The peace Jesus offers is the presence of God bringing us salvation, a basic harmony within the depth of our being. It gives us the ability to live life to the full no matter the circumstances. Jesus’ peace, so different from the world’s sense of a peace rooted in an illusionary prosperity and indulgence, begins and ends in love. Jesus’ peace, energized by the Spirit, has the potential to create and empower humankind’s greatest good. This is the opening to love God and to love our neighbor. Even in the midst of tension and turmoil, love can pass through the dark valley and, even in the dark valley, bring peace.
Today’s gospel is taken from the message shared in the context of the Last Supper. Jesus is calling the disciples and us to trust in him in spite of the impending horror of the Passion and Death. He is telling us that love will win out. He will reveal the fullness of God’s love, God’s presence and God’s peace in the gift of the Paraclete. This Spirit will help us to both understand and embrace more deeply all that Jesus has taught us.
Through our openness to life, and with the guidance of the Paraclete, the truth of the gospel will unfold in our hearts. Jesus will truly become our way, our life and our truth. All of these gifts of the Spirit are ours for the asking. A commitment to deep personal prayer is the most reliable means to embrace the Spirit’s call to new life in Christ.
As the power of the Resurrection emerges in our hearts, we can take in the daily events of evil and corruption with an awakening sense of hope. Gun violence and denial of climate change, racial and sexual prejudice, the dehumanization of migrants and the isolation and neglect of the poor and ever-present trial of deep conflict with our loved ones will remain the stuff life. The unrelenting faces of evil will not leave the headlines any time soon. However, we have received the gift of God’s peace and the Paraclete. Now we can bring a heart energized by hope to these certainties. We will feel empowered to enter the struggle for a better world, the coming world of God’s kingdom. Our sense of meagerness will give way to an empowerment to take the next step for and for life, no matter how small.
Driven by the Spirit, in the footsteps of Jesus, we can face the challenges of a sinful church and a broken society even as we grow in awareness of or personal self-centeredness. We can indeed be the instruments of peace in the midst of the social upheaval of a broken immigration system, continuing racial change and white privilege, and the shattering of comfortable but often blind definitions of sexuality. We can honor and activate our hunger for justice no matter the depth or complexity of the forces of evil.
God has spoken in Christ Crucified and Christ Risen. Love will prevail! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
