Devotion for today: He is not here! He is risen!

PEACE BE WITH YOU (JOHN 20:19)

The Christian Faith as a Peace Movement

At the beginning of Christian history the faithful were a marginal group, politically insignificant. They themselves were unable actively to participate in the shaping of public policy on any matter.

 Nonetheless, the peace of Christ was for them not merely an inner peace and not merely a future peace.

The first words of the Risen One to his confused disciples had been: Peace be with you (John 20:19). In each Eucharistic assembly what happened on the evening of Easter Day was repeated for them.

The Risen One came in among his disciples and spoke to them: Peace be with you. In this their paschal feast, in which the Church was truly alive, they experienced how the apostles’ saying is true: Christ is our peace (Eph 2:14).

Here they met with the new sphere of peace that faith had opened up – the reconciliation of slaves and free men, of Greeks and barbarians, of Jews and gentiles (Gal 3:28). Here, they who were deeply divided one from another in the framework of the society of that time were at one, were indeed one single person – the new man, Jesus Christ, who on the basis of the Father’s love bound them all together (Gal 3:17, 28).

That is why the Eucharist itself was often simply referred to as “peace”: it was the place of the presence of Jesus Christ and was thereby the sphere of a new peace, the sphere of a table fellowship that transcended all boundaries and limits, in which everyone was at home everywhere.

 The bishops of the whole world notified their election to each other by letters of peace. Any carrier of a letter of peace who came upon Christians somewhere was among his own family, wherever it was, a brother among brethren. It was with the inmost element of their faith, with the Eucharistic assembly, that the early Christians thus did something politically most significant: they created spheres of peace and built, as it were, highroads of peace through a world of strife.

 ( Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger: God is Near Us: The Eucharist, The Heart of Life, Ignatius Press, 2001).

Make Me a Channel of Your Peace

Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me bring your
love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord
And where there's doubt, true faith in
you.

Chorus:
Oh, Master grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace
Where there's despair in life, let me bring
hope
Where there is darkness, only light
And where there's sadness, ever joy.

Chorus:

Make me a channel of your peace
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
In giving to all men that we receive
And in dying that we're born to eternal
life.

Chorus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aq-QM_Fh6o

Remember to pray day 3 of your Divine Mercy Novena
www.divinemercy.org.