The Peace of Christ in 2010

At Mass every Sunday, just before we sing the Lamb of God, we stop and take a few minutes to exchange the Kiss of Peace. Now granted, in American culture kissing everyone around you in the Church is somewhat frowned upon, but we still shake hands and say “peace of Christ be with you.” It got me thinking the other day, what exactly is this peace of Christ which I am asking for and wishing on my brothers and sisters in Christ? My simple question about Christ’s peace turned into a more in depth line of thought than I originally anticipated, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts with you. For starters I don’t think that the Christ’s peace is something that we should take lightly. For one, I don’t think it matches up very well with what many people consider to be peace. For one thing, the whole idea of peace at any cost doesn’t really seem to me to be the kind of thing that Jesus Christ preached. After all, Jesus didn’t exactly die quietly in his sleep one night. His passion and death was extremely violent and even Pilot feared a riot. Then Jesus turns around and rises from the dead, and breathes His Spirit out upon the Apostles and gives them his peace. After that the Apostles take up the preaching and teaching where Christ left off, and in return they all had the opportunity to share in his suffering and death. Only John managed to not become a martyr for the faith, ad he got exiled instead. Stephen got stoned by Saul and Peter and the rest were thought crazy drunkards within moments of Pentecost. All this because of the Holy Spirit and the “peace” of Christ. So to me the peace of Christ is something far more in depth than merely a lack of violence. It cannot be attained through modern nihilistic philosophies that preach tolerance at the cost of truth. More than anything the peace of Jesus Christ is not for wimps or sissies. The peace of Christ is for real men and real women. The kind of men and women who are not afraid to stand up and say that right is right and wrong is wrong, and your personal feelings don’t change the truth of the matter. The peace Christ offers is not necessarily a lack of violence, for that can only occur when everyone converts. This is not to say that we can achieve peace by causing violence, for that would be a lie, but the true peace of Christ does mean that you are ready and willing to suffer violence at the hands of others for the sake of what you believe. For example, our faith teaches us that that human life is a precious gift from God, yet even Catholic universities like Notre Dame arrest people for protesting against abortion and those who promote it. We know that marriage is between one man and one woman, yet our world tells us that such views are intolerant and should be considered hate crimes. Thus for 2010 I pray that the peace of Christ would rest upon every member of our parish. That we would all be willing to accept the truth that God has offered us rather than the lies presented by the world, and that we would all be willing to suffer and die in defense of those truths. The seeds of the Church are sown in the blood of martyrs.