Peace be with you. I really mean it. Peace be with you. It’s so hard to live in peace, isn’t it, to have peace throughout our days? It’s one of the signs of the resurrected life, and one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit: Peace. Our Lord, when he revealed himself to his disciples, that’s what he said to them when they were terrified, and they were locked in the room together, “Peace be with you.” Saint Teresa of Avila said that we should not lose our inner peace for anything. The idea is anything that robs us or takes us away from inner peace, it’s so important to maintain that.
I was reading a comic years ago, and it was a picture of a man who was laying on a beach chair with the sun coming down upon him. It had a little caption that said, “Outer peace is nice too.” It is, right? We have to orchestrate our lives in such a way that we do have outer peace because we’re human beings, but have inner peace as well. It’s so important.
I remember when I first got a job, it was at Dairy Queen. I was 15 years old. After that I worked at McDonald’s, then after that it was Walmart, and then once I got into college, I worked at a gas station for the rest of my time here. What I discovered during that time in the service industry is there’s not a lot of peace. I wish I could go back there now instead of being the person that I was at that time because I would be devastated by the way that people treated me. I took it personally. I didn’t realize that people are just sometimes angry and crabby and not at peace. They would, for some reason, take it out on me. I have to say I was pretty good at flipping burgers, and I can make that Dairy Queen cone with the swirl on top. I made a good cone, but people were still mad for some reason.
The funniest story I ever had of that was when I was working at a gas station at York and Sprague. The Shell was still open. But we had an emergency button that we would press whenever there was some kind of fire or something dangerous going on outside by the pumps. And I’ll never forget this moment because somebody’s engine caught on fire. There were plumes of black smoke, you could actually see flames coming from the engine. So, I was very responsible, and I hit the emergency stop button. And I kid you not, this lady walked through the plume of smoke and she came up to me screaming saying, “Why isn’t my gas working?” I’m like, lady, do you see this? Gas is flammable. I’m just being responsible here. But people would take my peace away, and they would just lash out at you with anger. So, I think about myself, if I could be the person I was back then, I don’t think I would let that get to me as much. I would probably laugh at that lady coming through the smoke instead of being upset by it.
I think when you’re not mature, these things can get to you. People have a way of sabotaging and destroying what otherwise could be a wonderful day. Sometimes we can be those people. Jesus is inviting us to live in the resurrected life, and one of the fruits of the resurrected life is Peace.
I had a spiritual director for the first fifteen years of my priesthood. I loved him so much. At the end of every session, before I left, he would just say to me, “Be at peace.” He meant it. Be at peace. Go forward now and be at peace. He was one of those people in my life that just sitting in his presence brought me to peace, no matter what was going on in my own personal life. He was able to bring me to peace. I wonder, what if we were all like that? What if we were all in such peace within ourselves that other people, even being in our presence, would be brought to peace. I think the tendency is, as Saint Teresa of Avila warns, is to lose our inner peace. There’s nothing that should ever take that away from us. The more that we dwell in peace, the more that we live in this resurrected life of peace, the more that we’re able to remain.
We are physical humans, and that’s why I like the comic, that outer piece is nice too. It’s important for us that we actually physically take care of ourselves in our lives to have times of outer peace so that it allows for times of inner peace. That’s the importance of the Sabbath on Sunday, we allow this to be a day of peace. It can even be throughout your day, taking time every day to find something that allows you to be at peace. Maybe that’s listening to music, playing an instrument, painting, watching a good movie, or just being in the presence of good company.
Do not lose our inner peace for anything. I hope that some ways I can do that for you, as well. I esteem to be like my spiritual director was. I hope that when you come into confession and when you leave, you walk out of there much more at peace. Or if you meet me in the office, you walk out of there much more at peace. But the same ought to be true of all of us. That we meet people that radiate peace. So, no matter what we’re doing throughout our day, who we interact with, are we offering them peace? Are they going to experience peace just by being in our presence? Like that spiritual director that could say to people, and to me before I left, “Be at peace.” Can we say that and mean that to people in our lives? “Be at peace.” There’s nothing to worry about. Jesus has already suffered, died, and rose, and he’s bringing us into that resurrected life. If we find ourselves not at peace, it’s really important that we attend to that because when we’re not at peace, that’s when we tend to take it out on other people and we make their lives less peaceful. It’s important that we do whatever we can to maintain that inner peace. Never lose that inner peace for anything.
I just invite you to reflect on that. Is there anything in your life that is robbing you from peace right now? Is there anything outside externally that’s keeping you from outer peace? Anything internally that’s keeping you from inner peace? I invite you to tend to that but also, as we receive communion today, to allow Jesus, when we receive him, to truly give us peace so when we walk out of here, we can be peacemakers.
There are so many people in our world, we know the tensions of the greater world, but sometimes we can’t fix that immediately, but we can bring all of those that we interact with on daily basis to peace. Maybe that’s your family, maybe that’s your spouse, maybe that’s your coworkers, maybe that’s your friends. Offer peace. After this homily, we’ll take a few moments just to try to relax for a moment in the midst of our Sabbath here so that we can truly have inner peace and experience outer peace, and I can say to all of you, “Be at Peace.”
