Sixth Sunday of Easter,
Mothers’ Day
One of the beautiful lines
in that gospel, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”
We know that in our world
today we need peace. Yet the peace that
may come in our world for many people is just and end to the wars, the violence
and hatred. That would be great if that
would take place.
And yet the peace that Jesus
gives is not that kind of peace. It’s
not just a warm fuzzy feeling that Jesus wants to give to you and to me. It’s more than just the ending of war,
hostility, violence, hatred, fear or anxiety.
As Jesus says, “It is the peace that comes deep within.”
It’s a kind of peace, really
when I think you look at it a little more deeply, think of Jesus here in this
particular gospel. He’s preparing His
disciples for His eventual death, then His leaving. And of course they’re filled with anxiety,
hurt, frustration, loneliness, abandonment.
And are those not many of the fears, anxieties that you and I experience
in our own lives. So He is trying to
prepare them for this. Perhaps the way
He knows how to do it is to say, “Look, I’m trying to get you ready.” We know that when Jesus was on the cross, the
other gospels point this out, one of the most beautiful prayers that He gave us
at the moment of His death, in fear and trepidation, “Father, to Your hands I
commend My spirit.”
In that same context again,
all of us here today, what’s the legacy that you want to be your family’s. Many of us don’t want to think of our own
death or dying. But when you and I are
gone, what is it that we want people to remember about us? What inheritance or the bequest or the legacy
that you want to leave them? Land? Possessions?
Power? Money? Will they fight over it if there’s not
enough?
I think of my own dad and
his dying recently. There wasn’t
anything left. We’d spent all the money
on his healthcare, the nursing home. He
had a rocking chair and a TV set. Those
were the sum total of his possessions.
Harry and I looked at each other shortly before the funeral and said,
“You know, we haven’t had a fight yet about who’s going to get what’s
left.” My brother, Bob had already picked
up the TV set and the rocking chair so we said, “I guess there’s nothing left
to fight about.”
But what was the legacy my
dad left? There are two very wonderful
things I believe he gave to us, his children.
One was the ability to change. My
dad, at the age of 50, turned his life around, admitted that he was an
alcoholic, stopped drinking and lived the next 40 years of life free from
alcohol. He changed, he changed his life
around. What a beautiful legacy that
is.
Secondly I believe he taught
me how to forgive. How to be able to
give forgiveness and how to be able to receive it. That’s no money, no possessions, no power, no
prestige. That is his bequest, I give
you peace.
So that really is what Jesus
is doing. He’s giving us His legacy, His
bequest. And what He is saying is, “I
give you My peace. I give you the peace
that no one else can give to you.”
Again go back to that image
of Jesus on the cross. Death is the
ultimate fear, right? Because is that
separation from life itself. All the
other fears that you and I have really flow I think from that primordial fear
of death itself. So Jesus meets death
head-on, and He takes death and blends it with love. And it’s in that joining together of love and
death, overcoming the power of death, the fear of death, putting love over it,
the love and the trust that He knows He has in the Father, that then He can
face it with trust and confidence. That
is the peace that Jesus gives. “Father
into Your hand I commend My spirit.”
You and I are here this
morning because we have a relationship with Jesus. We trust that relationship. You and I will go forth from the Eucharist
today wherever our journeys may take us.
Whatever fears, anxieties, doubts we may have inside of us, we can take
those and we can trust that Jesus is with us because of the relationship that
He has with the Father. I trust You, Father.
You will get Me through this. He
still had anxiety about His death.
Perhaps He still had great fear.
Yet He trusted that He would get through it. Your anxieties, fears, doubts, worries,
pains, hardships are still going to be there, yet you and I trust that God will
get us through it. That’s the peace that
Jesus gives. We can walk through the
midst of it and we will know that there is something far, far better beyond
it. It won’t take away all the
hardships, the pain or the death. We
know we will get through it, that God will strengthen us.
The image again maybe to
use. Look over at the shrine of Mary,
Mother of Perpetual Help. May is our
traditional month to honor Mary. Mary
stood at the foot of Jesus when her Son was dying. Somehow I have to believe Mary looked up at
her son, Jesus looked down at her. And
again perhaps in that gaze of love Jesus knew that he was going to be okay.
St. Alphonsus, the founder
of our Redemptorist order always used to say to us, “Go to Jesus through
Mary.” A couple of the titles we have
for Mary are “Queen of Peace, Lady of Sorrows.”
So go to Jesus through Mary.
On this Mothers’ Day think
of our own mothers who have been there for us in all of our fears, doubts,
worries, joys, hardships of life. We
knew that we could go to them and they would hold us in their arms. Perhaps that’s the image that Jesus had
knowing His mother was there with Him as well as His Father. Taking fear, blending, pouring love all over
it. That’s the peace of Jesus.
Go to Jesus through
Mary. It’s not a fairy tale, it’s very
real. Julian of Norwich, mystic in the
medieval centuries used to say it this way, “All will be well, all will be
well, all matter of things will be well.
We are in the arms of Mary, in the embrace of Jesus, surrounded by the
peace of the Spirit. All will be well.”