Peace of the Risen Lord

‘Peace be with you.’  (LK 24:35-48)

The peace of Christ often eludes us individually and collectively. 

In our struggles and fear, in times of violence and oppression, when the bad things of our world just seem to keep piling up, it is often hard to see Jesus’ presence and peace.

In such moments it may appear that despair has triumphed, and we are left with only questions in our hearts.

The consoling presence of the Risen Christ in today’s Gospel passage should do much to put our anxiety at rest.  When Jesus shows the troubled disciples his hands and his feet and eats with them, he models precisely how we can be that peace in troubled hearts and difficult times.

Jesus calls each and every one of us, his disciples, to use our hands to embrace the suffering and help carry the lonely; to use the bounty of our table and the friendship of our homes to ease the hunger and isolation by providing a meal and conversation for someone in need.

My neighbor in New Hampshire emailed to say that her daughter-in-law was in a serious car accident last Friday (Good Friday) in Alaska where they live.  Her truck was struck by a 30 foot chunk of ice that fell from a cliff overhanging the road.  It flattened the truck to the point where she was bent forward so far that she was suffocating.  A tow-truck happened by and the driver used his equipment to pull the roof up enough to provide some relief until rescue people arrived.  They say that action probably saved her life.  She has a fractured skull, bleeding on the brain, fractured vertebrae, fractured jaw, pelvis and arm, and is just now coming out of a coma.

But, my neighbor wrote, the most amazing thing, next to the fact that her daughter-in-law is still alive, is the outpouring of prayers and support from people everywhere.  That, she said, is what is getting them through. 

That is the peace of the Risen Christ.  May we be bearers of that same peace as together we continue to build the Father’s Kingdom of true and lasting peace.