PEACE
Never was our need greater for guidance and help from Mary, for never before has our world stood so precariously on the brink of disaster, or self-destruction, and never before have we, as Christians, been made aware of the great and urgent need of bringing Christ to all people. Everything now is on a gigantic scale, evil is so terrific that it almost passes belief, such relentless cruelty takes place daily that we feel totally inadequate to deal with such problems. In spite of our high standard of living, we see how personal conflicts and difficulties increase on every side. We hear about the rapid increase of human neurosis in our society. Some of us turn to psychiatrists for our cure: others to drugs.
What do people want?
What is still lacking?
What makes us today so psychologically sic that tomorrow even our bodies will become ill?
Today a kind of ‘practical atheism’ exists everywhere in the world. But this atheism can give only superficial answers to man’s deepest questions. In fact, it even creates a whole set of new problems. Our deepest question is this: What meaning does life really have? Every where in the world today one discovers a driving need to find answers. What can answer it? Surely not a tepid Christianity – surely not compromise? NO. Only absolute Christianity, undiluted heroic, crucified love, which stops at nothing and is ready to give every thing, including life itself. We are faced with terrible odds, and as Christians we hold not simply a code of honour or a great ideal in trust, but incredible though it is, we hold Christ in trust. What are we to do? To begin with, we need to imitate him, to ask ourselves at every turn what would he have done: what would he have thought, how would he have felt, what did he say about this and this and this. What would he have thought about the cruelty that exists on such a world wide scale today? Such things, though dreadful, are not new. There was for him only one measure against evil, Himself: all his loveliness and power and life, and he was God. The price he paid to fight evil was high indeed; the Agony in the Garden, the betrayal of his friend, the desertion of nearly all his followers, the utter loneliness with which he faced failure and death, the mockery, the night in prison, the injustice, the crown of thorns, the scourging, the nails, the thirst, the despair, the degradation of his death. None of this was too much for Christ to pay to fight evil, to overcome sin.
We will never have to pay such a price ourselves – no-one could suffer so profoundly as Christ, but we can, if only we will, become other Christ’s and help men and women who are in dire need of healing and love. The person who gives his coat, his food, his money, his sleep, his thought, his energy and his life to help others will be a true lover; it is such lovers who will win our peace. Peace as we know is not merely an absence of war. The Hebrew and Aramaic words it represents imply the idea of ‘health’, ‘wholeness’ and general well being. It is the peace that the risen Jesus brought to the fearful disciples hiding behind their locked doors. It is the peace that we as Christian must bring to those who are lost, hopeless and forsaken. It is the peace which helps the individual to believe he is worthwhile, that he is loveable and especially loveable to God. It is this peace which will unlock hearts too fearful to chance loving, too arid to feel joy, and bring them out from their spiritual wastelands to live a truly human life, healed from the wounds that inflicted such pain.
Today, Jesus ask our help as he once asked Mary of Nazareth for her human nature, for her littleness, her limitations, flesh, blood and bone. He who was invulnerable asked to be able to feel cold and heat, hunger and thirst, weariness and pain. He who was wholly sufficient to himself asked Mary to give him a heart that might be broken. Mary answered “Yes” to Christ and she answered for us all. Had he asked her for anything else but her littleness she could not have given it, because she had nothing else. This is what Christ asks of each one of us – to give him ourselves, just as we are – all he looks for is a generous heart. This is the trust given to us. We are all ‘other Christs’ but not all know it.
There are many and various ways in which Jesus calls us to help in his redemptive plan: to heal, to bring hope, to show the way to him. For some it is the vocation to: the priesthood, the religious life, marriage. Tending and caring for: the sick, the disabled, the poor, the prisoner. He may also ask us to do a little extra work apart from any one of these vocations. This does not come in a blinding flash, but through an inner prompting which grows stronger until we know it is a thing to be done at the expense of one’s own needs and desires. Such a call was responded to in 1969 by a few lay people in the Clifton diocese, who came together to promote prayer amongst the laity – the pray being the rosary – to live and relive with Mary the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, their major goal being to make Christ in the Holy Eucharist more known and loved world wide. Rosary circles were to become the means of bringing hundreds of thousands of people, groups of people throughout the world, continually paying an ‘extra visit’ to our Eucharistic Lord.
The suffering of the world today is our suffering, we cannot estrange ourselves from it Jesus sends us out, if we will let him, to heal and bring hop, for his way is a way of love. Our work is to love too, to love always, to love everyone, and to love to the end. And it is in and through the Eucharist, his Body and Blood, that we are given strength and understanding to continue this work of Eucharistic love.