Gospel Reflection 2021/2022

Everyone desires and longs for PEACE.

Peace is the freedom from disturbances. Peace is also synonymously: order, stability, constancy and tranquillity.

Yes, it is innate for everyone to desire peace. Or should we say: we all long for peace, desperately. In an increasingly chaotic, confused and confusing world, we long for peace – order, stability, constancy and tranquillity.

We desire and long for peace. However, all we hear are global crisis and depression, wars and conflicts, persecutions and terrorisms, political unrests, economic meltdowns, pandemics, diseases and plagues, poverty and starvation, pains and sufferings, heartbreaks and headaches, tragedies, disasters and calamities, death and massacre…

Peace does seem like an elusive prey, a fragment of our imagination, a wishful thinking and an unattainable goal. Our pursuit of peace does always seem like a futile and vain wild-goose-chase.

Why we cannot find PEACE?

Perhaps, we cannot find peace because:

(1) we understand peace wrongly, and

(2) we have been looking for peace at the wrong place.

What can give us peace?

(1) Can our money give us peace?

(2) Can our big houses and luxurious cars give us peace?

(3) Can our career and paper qualifications give us peace?

(4) Can our fame and power give us peace?

‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity’ [Ec 1: 2] Nothing and no one can guarantee us true peace. TRUE PEACE is a gift from God; the rest are just poor counterfeits.

Only Jesus can give us the TRUE PEACE that we desire and long for: “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” [Jn 24: 27]

As St Augustine of Hippo would exclaim, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”

The PEACE of Christ.

If our perception of peace is the elimination of all disturbances, chaos, conflicts and disorders, then we are greatly and sadly mistaken. Note that peace is the freedom from disturbances, NOT the absence of disturbances.

The peace of the world is superficial, transient, self-centred. It is based entirely on circumstances. The peace of the world is to kill the problems: kill our conscience, kill our feelings and emotions, kill the truth and the messengers of truth, kill the babies in the womb, kill the terminally ill, kill the criminals, kill the competitors, kill those who oppose or reject us…

The peace of Christ is completely different from the peace of the world. The peace of Christ is profound, abiding and Christ-centred. It is not the absence of troubles but the presence of Christ. It flows from the deepest recesses of our hearts where Jesus dwells and reigns. Christ’s peace can be experienced even in the midst of the most painful and chaotic crisis because at the heart of every crisis, CHRIST-is.

The PEACE of Christ is the presence of Christ and His Kingdom.

Christ is here. And with Him is His Kingdom of justice and peace, love and truth:

“Mercy and faithfulness have met;

justice and peace have embraced.

Faithfulness shall spring from the earth

and justice look down from heaven.

[Ps 85: 10-11]

Justice, peace, love and truth are inseparable – we cannot have one without another. Injustice, anger, hatred and unforgiveness, half-truths, fabricated truths, mixed truths and untruths will NEVER lead us to Christ’s peace. Therefore, Pope John Paul II rightfully stresses that, “No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness.”

We are the ambassadors for Christ. [2 Co 5: 20]

Jesus calls each one of us to mission. We have been entrusted with this message of justice and peace, love and truth, and the Good News of God’s Kingdom. We are His ambassadors in this troubled world; we are the channels of His peace.

“Let your first word be, ‘Peace to this house!’…

Cure those who are sick, and say, ‘The Kingdom of God is very near to you!”

[Lk 10: 1-9]

Christ’s message of peace is not welcomed everywhere: challenges, obstacles, rejections and dangers await us. Yet, we can be assured that we go forth with the power and promise of our Lord Jesus Christ – ‘the power to tread underfoot serpents and the whole strength of the enemy; nothing shall ever hurt us’ [Lk 10: 20].

With Christ enthroned in our hearts, our minds and our lives, let us courageously and joyfully share His peace with the world around us.

Let our fervent prayer be:

“O Lord Jesus Christ, make me a channel of Your peace.”

Let us also pray with and pray for Ukraine that:

“The weapons of war be silenced, the evil of the aggressors be stopped, and those who hold the fate of the world in their hands may spare us from the horror and madness of war.”