"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you."

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The Gospel Reading from Today’s “Mass for Civil Needs: For Peace and Justice” (it being Independence Day in the United States):

John 14: 23-29,

Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.
“I have told you this while I am with you.
The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name–he will teach you everything and remind you of all that (I) told you.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.
And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe.

Again, as with the other two readings for today, it’s about peace. It’s the peace that Jesus gives to us for following him, not the kind of peace that the world metes out to it’s followers, but a different kind. Christian concepts of a thing are markedly different from the world’s concepts of the same thing.

There is also a confidence bestowed: the confidence that the Holy Spirit will be with us to teach us and to remind us of what Jesus said while on Earth. This is done through the “Teaching Authority” of the Catholic Church. (You can look up the word “Magisterium” in any of the “For All Things Catholic..” reference links.) The Church, in the authority of the Pope, is preserved from teaching moral and doctrinal error by the protection of the Holy Spirit. The proof of this is in that for 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has never taught anything in contradiction to Sacred Scripture, and has never changed Her teachings to be fundamentally different from the Scriptural basis. Doctrines and Dogmas have evolved through a greater understanding of scripture and human behavior (The Holy Spirit’s guidance!) No mere human institution, whether secular or religious, can make this claim. Numerous people have purportedly “disproven” such claims, however such exposes have been from a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the teaching. Or abject misinformation.

Anyway, I digress. Love Jesus. Follow Him. You will be “In Christ” as He will dwell within you. And where He is, so will the Father be (and the Spirit, too!).

A peace that cannot be given by the world.

Human failures and weakness and pressures from the world may make that peace elusive at times, but it is always there for the asking.

Pray for peace.

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