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As he prepares His disciples for His return to the Father, Jesus keeps offering them peace - not just any peace, but His peace: "My peace I give to you" (Jn 14:27).

An irrevocable gift then - not only a hope or another wish - it is something for forever, not just for now. It's almost a command! "Do not let your hearts be troubled" (Jn 14:1), He tells them, indicating the kind of peace He means.

It comes not from some external power or force, but from deep within. "Not as the world gives, do I give it to you," He says, and adds: "Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid" (Jn 14:27). In other words, with Christ's peace comes the absence of fear. Where there is fear there is no peace, no Jesus.

Speaking of fear, remember the old sci-fi classic, "The Day the Earth Stood Still?" As the title might infer, the world was worrying about the extraterrestrial community, with its bellicose propensities, which needed to stop. An alien vehicle has just landed on the lawn at the U.S. Capitol.

Klaatu, its striking commander, emerges first, alone, bearing in hand a mysterious device. It is a gift of friendship, a cure for cancer. A sharpshooter, mistaking it for a weapon, fires and destroys it. Enter Gort from the spaceship - a terrifying robocop eight feet tall! - to make a point. Such aggression will no longer be tolerated.

As his helmet visor lifts slowly and ominously, a laser-like beam discharges from within his metallic skull, instantly melting down a nearby tank. As Klaatu explains, his people created a force of such robots to squelch or at least quell violence.

This is not the peace that Christ offers - a "peace" that petrifies.

The peace we all seek and need, I think, is something much more than such a "pacification," a gag order or an imposed silence manufactured by an outside force that restrains us from bumping into one another and constrains us to abide by some set of rules. That well may be a legitimate function of parents or a classroom teacher, or even the state exercising that role on a larger scale.

It is the peace perhaps bargained for - minimally - through arms reduction, by the removal of weapons of destruction, be they chemical, projectile, explosive or inflammatory, verbal or non-verbal.

But is that the peace we pray for?

Someday, even robots might do just that! But where is the humanity in it? What really brings people together, what unites us, is precisely the presence of peace, not just the absence of violence.

Jesus gives us His personal presence, the Holy Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son - Himself. This is the meaning of Pentecost: the imparting of the tongues (of flame) that unite and inspire instead of divide and suppress, like the cacophony that a sinful humanity has made of our human differences, which becomes less of a call for the mutuality of relationship than a self-absorbing sacralization of divergency.

Jesus' peace is the true peace from within that unites human hearts who share the same truth. To take a practical example of how that can work, look at the witness of those really married in the Lord. The testimony of their life together begins with a solemn, public vow: to live together faithfully and for life: that is, completely given over to the Lord for each other and for the family to be procreated (or adopted) in and through their total love.

It is a sacrament of the Trinity! Two equal, yet different, partners are so in love as to generate another person, equal yet different, and somehow a sacrament of their unity. As do all humans, such families struggle with the temptations of our fallen state, just as Jesus willingly subjected Himself to by assuming our nature.

What keeps the partners united is not the rules and expectations they or, for that matter, Church or society impose on each, but the truth that unites them: the God at the center of their life together.

Great confidence and trust grows from any relationship committed and accountable to the same truth, the same divine presence: that personal, all-forgiving, all-blessing God we love.

The lyrics, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me," contain the insight that real peace must begin in the human heart. To know and love Jesus is to know and love peace itself, for peace is His personal presence.

The Holy Spirit, who is the master of relationships, is the Spirit we share with God and one another when we come together around the Lord at Mass, at prayer, in our families and as we go out into the world of commerce, politics, work and play.

It's a world that we need not fear, for Jesus is our peace: "Fear not, I have overcome the word" (Jn 16:33).[[In-content Ad]]

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