Last Updated on August 20, 2022 by GMC
©️2020 by Gloria M. Chang
Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
John 14:27-31a
Today’s Gospel passage not only inspires the “three peas,” but also illuminates three P’s: peace, person, and power.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”
Worldly peace is often equated with security. Food, shelter, clothing, money, status, fortifications—these give worldlings a sense of peace. Yet all of these means are external and mutable.
Christ wants to give us an immutable, everlasting peace that is unshakable by circumstance.
The world “has no power over me,” says Christ. To Pontius Pilate who will later inform him, “Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” Jesus will answer, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”
Christ’s acceptance in love of the evil done to him, in fulfillment of the Father’s will, stripped the world of its power. If Pilate’s sentence had been against Christ’s will, then yes, Pilate would have had power over him. But “the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me.” Oneness with the Father’s will is peace.
Jesus tells the disciples to “rejoice that I am going to the Father,” and to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, “Do not hold me… I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Between Easter and Pentecost, we await the promised Holy Spirit who will make us true persons in communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and all the angels and saints.