Homily

On the night of Christ’s birth, the angels in great choir sang to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to those on whom His favor rests.” Just before we begin the Liturgy the priests bow and make the sign of the cross two times while they say these words, and of course the first petition in the Liturgy is, “In peace let us pray to the Lord.” But the words of the angels are interesting to me. “Glory to God in the highest…” is surely a great phrase to use for the Lord. But then they talk about the peace of the people on whom God’s favor rests. They don’t exhort people to pray, or repent, or even to rejoice. They simply mention peace. Because Christ has come there is the opportunity for peace. He is indeed the Prince of Peace.

We hear about peace at His birth, and we also hear about peace at the other end of Jesus’ life on the night before He died. John 14:27— “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives peace do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

What is the peace the world gives? I would like to describe it as the peace that is “out there,” the conditions out there, outside of me. When there is no war or fighting, no aggravation or hostility or threats of violence or injury. When the world and people and conditions outside of me are all going well and not causing me any trouble—that’s the peace of the world. But how often do we share in that peace? How long does it last?

I suspect you probably have had the same experience that I am going to describe. Something happens to you that is nasty or unpleasant or disappointing or frustrating or upsetting or insulting or even dangerous. And today I am thinking of one particular thing that happened to me many years ago, just as an example. It made me very angry, and I almost couldn’t believe that he said it. After the words were spoken and after he was gone, I started thinking about it and rolling it around in my head, letting my anger baste the memory of this incident like a Thanksgiving turkey. I had to get something done and these thoughts went away to make room for that job, but not for long. They came back again. And again. And again, throughout the day. After a while there is nothing new to be thought about. Every angle of that situation has already been visited, reviewed, and thought about, again and again many times over. These thoughts become as stale as two-day-old French bread. The situation has turned into a film loop, where the same ideas, the same responses, the same emotion keeps rolling around in my head and throughout the day they continue to return to take hold of my attention and my feelings.

And then I begin wondering why I want to allow this thing to keep popping back into my thoughts and stirring me up over and over again. God’s grace came to my rescue with some helpful thoughts. What is the point of this? And as long as I continued to let these thoughts back into my head, I was unable to focus on something good, or positive, or useful. As long as I let them keep coming back into my head, I was missing opportunities for gratitude and helpful thoughts, peaceful thoughts. I finally decided to give myself a talking to.

“Stop it and just shut up. Do you need to have your Christmas preparation disturbed by the words of this one person?”

That was the end of it. Now a bit later in the day these same thoughts tried to poke their way back into my head several times, but I invoked the name of the Lord and I shut the door on them. And this indeed can happen by the grace of God.

We shouldn’t let our thoughts push us around. As much as possible we should live and serve in the peace of our Lord. What good, of what use were my thoughts about this man’s words to me? Why should I give away my peace because of them? Ridiculous. But at least I recovered that time. And, more and more over the years, I have learned to call on the Lord when I am stuck with angry, sad, anxious, or distressing thoughts. “Lord, give me peace and help me drive these thoughts away so that something better can take their place.”

There are hard, difficult, and stressful times in our lives where for a period, we may not be able to find peace at that moment. Even Jesus was in agony at the Garden of Gethsemane. But far too often we give up the peace of Christ ourselves. We allow other people and situations to take it from us by what has happened, or by what people say, or what they do, or what they won’t do. It’s as if we think we can only have peace when everything out there is working the way I want it to work, and everyone out there is acting the way I want them to act. Then I can be at peace. But that’s not the peace of Christ. That’s not how it worked for the Lord, and that’s not how it works for us.

The peace of Christ allows me to be free from obsessing, and worrying and being afraid, and remaining angry, because of this thing or that, this person or that person, this situation or that situation. The peace of Christ does not mean we rest secure in a perfect world, but rather that we rest secure in the protection of the Son of God, and believing that whatever comes our way He will not abandon us. The Word took on flesh because God wanted to be with us. And when we come up at the end of Liturgy, what truth do we profess? “Christ is among us! He is and always will be!” Christ did not come to us, He does not remain with us in order to ignore us and leave us as we are, without His gift of peace.

I saw an article headline on the Internet, “How to avoid the stress of the Holidays.” Ha! I’m sure it didn’t talk about embracing the peace of Christ, but my friends, let us actively seek out His peace this week and grab ahold of it whenever we are tempted to anger, frustration, disappointment, sadness or worry. Let us take hold of our thoughts and call on Christ for His gift of peace in our minds and in our hearts—so that just like the shepherds at the end of this week we too can find Him, love Him, and thank Him and pay Him homage.