One of the contrasts of liturgical celebration with worldly celebration is that we, as Christians, celebrate for much longer. For example, while the world celebrates Christmas for just a single day, the Christian liturgy celebrates Christmas for twelve days. Similarly, we are still celebrating ‘Eastertide’ this Sunday, five weeks after Easter Sunday. But what, exactly, are we celebrating during Eastertide? Lent looks forward towards Easter, but what does Eastertide look forward to? Is this just a period of remembrance or also one of anticipation?
The answer is that Eastertide does indeed anticipate. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the beginning, the first fruits of what Mary also now enjoys, by a special favour, and what will one day be enjoyed by all the saints: to be with God body and soul in glory. This anticipation is why today’s Second Reading looks forward to the heavenly Jerusalem, city of the saints and holy angels, lit by the glory of God. Similarly in today’s Gospel, Jesus Christ looks forward to the gifts of God bestowed on those united with Him, in particular the Gift of the Holy Spirit and a promise of ‘peace’, a peace the world cannot give.
So what, then, is this special peace that comes from God? One of difficulties in understanding peace is that it is a dangerously ambiguous word. What most people understand by peace is the undisturbed enjoyment of worldly goods, the peace advocated by the ancient philosopher Epicurus. For Epicurus, the greatest goal of life was to be tranquil, free of fear, without pain and living a self-sufficient existence surrounded by everything one needs. When British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from meeting Adolf Hitler in 1938, a meeting at which he had left Czechoslovakia essentially defenceless, Chamberlain believed he had found ‘peace for our time’. Indeed, he told his listeners they could go home and sleep quietly in their beds. Without wishing to minimise the great difficulties that Chamberlain faced, the fact remains that the kind of peace which Chamberlain claimed to have found was Epicurean, willing to tolerate evil in order to remain undisturbed, at least for a little longer. In today’s world, when people talk about ‘peace’, this peace to which they refer is also usually Epicurean: the undisturbed enjoyment of those worldly goods which modern industry is so devoted to supplying. This Epicurean ideal is for a world without pain, but which is also a world without sacrifice and hence without greatness, achievement, heroes or saints. Furthermore, an Epicurean world is paradoxically self-destructive. A sign of this tendency is a strong agitation today for euthanasia, born from a desire to avoid possible pain in the approach to death by putting oneself to death in advance. Epicurean societies, as well as individuals, also risk collective suicide over the longer term, because it is so hard to arouse the people of such societies to fight evil and to defend what is good, even when facing annihilation.
Clearly Jesus Christ, who in John chapter 14 is about to be crucified, is not offering Epicurean peace. Indeed, many of those to whom he is talking will face suffering and even a cruel death for the faith in the years to come. The Peace that Christ bestows is not a selfish self-sufficiency, but a kind of harmony with God from which an inner calm and joy arises like living water welling up within one’s soul. Such Peace also finds expression in friendship with those who are also friends with God: after all, if two people are in harmony with God, they will also be in harmony with one another. An image of this peace can be found in that of dancers who are dancing in perfect union, or an orchestra playing in perfect harmony. Christ promises that this Peace, a Fruit of the Holy Spirit, begins in this life when a person is in friendship with God, but reaches its perfection in the Kingdom of Heaven, when we hope to see God face-to-face. A person who has this Peace may and probably will suffer in this world, but such suffering will be fruitful rather than wasted.
How, then, can we achieve this true Peace, this Fruit of the Holy Spirit? We need, first, to have clean souls, that is, souls that are clean of grave sin, because the Holy Spirit will not abide in a ruined or darkened temple. Hence to go to Confession is important to clear the ground and have a clean dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. Second, we need to learn, as St Paul says, to live and move in the Holy Spirit, to move, one might say, harmoniously with God. We must therefore ‘invest’, so to speak, time in prayer and learn to love, with God, the things that God loves. If we do these things, God will infallibly bring forth the fruits of holiness in our lives and we will experience true Love, true Joy and true Peace.