I'd like to meet:
In the evening of the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, ‘Peace be with you’, and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace be with you.
‘As the Father sent me,
so am I sending you.’
After saying this he breathed on them and said:
‘Receive the Holy Spirit.
For those whose sins you forgive,
they are forgiven:
for those whose sins you retain,
they are retained.’
John 20:19-23
Music:
Peace & QuietHave you noticed how, these days when we meet someone and ask how they are, they reply, ‘busy’ or ‘frantic’ or ‘as busy as ever’. I wonder what would happen if we replied, ‘Relaxed and laid back’ or ‘taking time to smell the roses’. I don’t think we would be believed, or we might get a lecture from our friends on how lucky we are not to be busy!As Christians we have to be careful about this busy-ness competition. Being active in our lives and engaged with the world around us is a gift, but if we are honest about our busyness, some of it is not virtuous. It’s about denial, avoidance or trying to stay up with our peer group.In John's account of the first Pentecost the primary gift Jesus' Spirit bestows on the disciples is peace. It's curious, isn't it, that just as we all compete with each other to be the busiest person we know, we also complain that what we really want is ‘some peace and quiet’. We can't have it both ways. Compulsive frantic activity is the enemy of peace.Sometimes we can think that peace and quiet is sitting in the lotus position in a darkened room. Christ’s gift of peace is more robust than that. Peace is like all the best things in life: an attitude of mind and a habit born of consistently making good choices. Some people can do a large of amount of work and be quite serene about it. Peace, for them, is an affair of the mind and a way of life.Seneca, a 2nd century philosopher, noticed, even in his day, how most of his friends and acquaintances were lacking peace. He wrote a famous book on anger and how to deal with it. He especially noticed that his richest friends were the angriest of all. Seneca came to believe that the reason so many people were agitated was that they had an unreasonable expectation about how smoothly their day would go. Those who were rich thought their money would buy them an easier life in every way and so when it didn’t, they got the angriest of all.If Seneca is right and we want more peace and quiet, we have to have realistic expectations of each day and factor in the things that might go wrong.Seneca's secular wisdom holds that the more aware we are of the frailties in us, others and life, the fewer fights we would have. In turn this would lead to fewer occasions when we would need to ask or give forgiveness. At Pentecost, forgiveness is the second gift Jesus bequeaths the disciples.If we really want to cultivate peace and quiet in our lives we have to confront the things we are trying to avoid or deny. Often these things hinge on painful memories or events where we were destructive toward others or they were toward us. Unless we forgive ourselves or forgive them, our busyness will ensure that we have enough clamour and activity to stay away from ugly memories. Unfortunately it usually follows that when we are so busy not dealing with the sins of our past, peace and quiet stay well away from us as well.Let's pray that while the Spirit might allow us to retain any sins, we choose Jesus’ first option this Pentecost and forgive as generously as we can those who have tried to crucify us. We might have to forgive ourselves as well. And then, like Jesus, with old wounds exposed, we can rejoice that the Spirit has breathed into us the greatest gift of all: the peace and quiet we most crave and need.© Richard Leonard SJ