My Peace I Leave To You

If Jesus left us his peace, where is it? It is right where he left it, with us, His faithful people.

It is hard for us to conceive of how much darkness and hatred and turmoil followed the Fall of Adam and Eve. The Old Testament is the story of a world in need of a Redeemer. It isn't pretty. It is a world at war.

We live in a post-Incarnation world in which these thing have not disappeared, but are mitigated by the love of Jesus.

The peace that Our Lord has to offer surpasses all understanding in so many ways and is diffused throughout the world now as it had never been before the coming of Our Savior.

It is ours to claim.

by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG AS YOU LISTEN:

"Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you." That is a very important concept sometimes that in the turmoil of the normal life, that we live, it's hard to keep in mind.

There are so many things that go on in our lives, it's so easy to lose the peace. I hate to pick on John but he doesn't get a whole lot of peace when he takes his putter, hits the ball, and goes to the pin, and the pin is what, five or six feet away, and he misses it by three feet. He's not getting a lot of peace.

Robert was an aircraft mechanic... did a plane you work on ever crash? "No."

In that period of time when a plane crashes they go in and figure out what was wrong. And Robert's name was all over the records. And the peace that Robert would have felt during the period of time going, "Oh my gosh, did I do something wrong?" It's the normal part of our lives. We all have it, no matter what we do.

We look at our children and go, "Why aren't they perfect the way I wanted them to be? That's not peace.

Our Lord Jesus Christ comes to us. And you think about what He brings to us. He says, "Peace be with you. My peace I give you." Who is it that is saying that to us?

Frank and Carol come up and say, "Peace be with you, Michael." I go, "Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it. You're a lovely couple. That's really nice." But you're not God.

Jesus, who died for us on the cross, who suffered, was resurrected, who returned, has ascended into Heaven, He comes up to you and says, "Peace be with you."

It is a remarkable thing that occurs. And I can say one example that I have… and there are many others… I keep on going back to Parkland Hospital, but this is one that really strikes me.

Old Parkland Hospital. If anybody ever goes into Old Parkland Hospital, in the basement was the emergency room. It was at the lowest level. And if you had an emergency, and people would complain about this... and I would go in and explain about this and I said, "No, no, no, no, this is a good thing,"... if you had an emergency and they put you in a bed and put you in the hall, you were in good shape. Because they were able to stabilize you and they were going to come back and take care of you. And people would go, "They made me lie here for eight hours." I'd say, "Oh, this is great! This is wonderful! We need to thank God that you're not in one of those rooms!"

And they would have rooms that had glass and you could see in and you could see them doing things to all those people. Those people were in trouble, but not that much trouble.

They has some rooms around the outside that had doors. Now if your were in a room at Parkland Hospital Emergency Room when I worked there, that had a door, and they closed the door, you were in trouble.

And off in the corner, there was one room particularly that was as away from everybody possible. It had a door, decent size. And it was about as far away as you could ever get from the doctors and the medical staff in that emergency room. If you were in that room, you were in trouble. In fact, you were not expected to leave the emergency room. You were going to die.

So one day, I said, you know I went down there... "Well your patient's in the emergency room." I said, “I'm chaplain Michael." I go down. “I'm looking for Mrs. So and So.” "She's back in the corner." "Oh good. She's back in the corner. That's what I really wanted to hear.”

I knock on the door. I say, "This is Chaplain Michael. Can I come in?" And they say, "Oh, sure, come in."

So we have a bed that has... you know, you've seen railings on hospital beds. No, this railing was solid. It was pure metal. She was basically in a crib. And there, with her, was her daughter and her granddaughter. And her daughter was upset. I mean, her mother was dying. There was no question about it. Her granddaughter, and this was one of the things that I will never forget, she had lost an eye, but she did not have the ability to get a prosthesis. So all she had was an eye socket.

And the woman herself was hallucinating. I mean ranting and raving and shouting and twisting and turning and everything else. And so I went in and I started talking to the mother and the granddaughter a little bit, and I said, "Would you like to pray?" And from this container, that is really what it was, a voice comes. "Yes!"

Whoa, whoa wait a minute! What just happened?

And so we went and prayed with her. You know, just did a prayer. I can't repeat the prayer.

And we finished the prayer. I said, "God bless you." I gave her a blessing. Interestingly enough, even in that Protestant of a place, most people didn't mind that I would give them a Catholic blessing. "May Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen." We finished the prayer and she started hallucinating.

She died. No big deal about that part.

That's peace that comes from Our Lord Jesus Christ.

That was, to me, a very vivid example of the peace that Our Lord Jesus Christ gives to each and every one of us.

No matter how extreme the situation that we face, no matter how troublesome the worries, no matter how much it plagues upon us, when Our Lord Jesus Christ came to His disciples and said, "Peace be with you. My peace I give you.", when we offer the sign of peace at Mass, and even here, we are offering, trying to offer of ourselves, some part of the peace that Jesus Christ gives us.

But always remember. No matter the circumstances, that peace is available to us upon request.

Many times the peace may come through the sacrament of Reconciliation. Many times the peace comes from a blessing.

I love giving blessings. You can't imagine the transformation that occurs. But I'm not doing a thing!

Many times just giving the peace of love that we are commanded to give, being in love loving your neighbor, brings that peace. Because it is not our peace. Our peace in itself does not bring the peace that we offer to the world, and can offer to the world through our belief in Our Lord Jesus Christ, is so far beyond our comprehension and so wonderful and wondrous.

So always keep in mind: that peace is there for you. Come in here. Many people come here for that peace alone.

It is such a wondrous thing that not only can we receive, but through our love of neighbor, our true love of neighbor commanded upon us by Jesus Christ, we can bring Jesus' peace to the world. And that peace is, like I said, one of the most wondrous, wonderful things in the world.

And it is just like my little kids, after all the turmoil of two weeks being with family, or Disneyland, or whatever it was, to be able to get in their own bed and just go, "Ahhh! I'm home."

And that, in many ways, exemplifies the peace of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

May 5, 2019 2