Peace be to you! This is our Lord’s Easter blessing, thrice repeated in the Gospel of to-day; and a blessing which all his faithful may obtain. And it is the one for which we are continually seeking, each in his own way, but which we can find nowhere but with him who to-day offers it to us.

What is this peace? Is it freedom from conflict? Is the Christian to have no battle to fight, no enemy to overcome? No, surely our Lord does not promise us such an easy road to heaven as this. “Do not think,” he says, “that I came to send peace upon earth; I came not to send peace, but the sword.” We must make up our minds, for the sake of the Christian faith, to sustain not only the assaults of the devil and of our own evil passions, but also the opposition of those who should be our friends. “A man’s enemies,” our Saviour goes on to say, “shall be they of his own household.”

In this sense, then, we cannot hope for peace in this world. No, our lot must be, if we have really enlisted in Christ’s army, that of all soldiers: war, and its turmoil. As St. Paul says it was for himself so must it be for us: “combats without, fears within.” Struggles for our temporal life; for God has said to Adam our father, and in him to us his children: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread “; struggles far more terrible and momentous for our spiritual life, against flesh and blood, also “against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness,” in which a single slip may mean eternal ruin, a single wound instant death.

Where, then, is our peace in this inevitable war, this contest which demands all the energies of our body and soul? What peace can we have while its issue is still uncertain, its events yet unknown? Surely it seems a mockery for our Lord to say, “Peace be to you,” when he sends us not peace, but war and its alarms.

But it is not a mockery; he who cannot be deceived also cannot deceive. His words are faithful and true. He has really peace to give us—peace in the midst of combat, calm even in the storm.

When the storm arose on the sea of Galilee, and he was asleep in the boat, his disciples came to him, saying: “Lord, save us, we perish.” But he answered: “Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith?” Was there not reason for them to be fearful, to lose their peace of mind, when death was staring them in the face, and all their efforts to save themselves were vain? No, not if they had faith to show that God was with them.

This, then, should have been their peace; this should be ours: the possession of God. He has given himself entirely for us and to us in the battle in which he has placed us. He fights on our side. What, then, have we to fear if we will only keep close to him? We are sure of the victory if we call him to our aid. As St. Paul says, “If God be for us, who is against us? He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how hath he not also with him given us all things?”

Peace, then, we should have in our spiritual combat; but how in the battle for our temporal life? Here we are not promised success; no, it must be defeat, at least in the end. We must lose at last by death all that we seek of the goods of this world. The peace which the world gives is then a delusion; it lasts but for an hour; the shadow of death is upon it. “O death!” says Holy Scripture, “how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that hath peace in his possessions!” Here again, therefore, our true peace is in the possession of him who is eternal; this is the peace which the world can neither give nor take away. All the storms of this world will not shake or disturb him whose house is built on this rock. “Who,” again says St. Paul, “shall separate us from the love of Christ; shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword?”

This, therefore, is the true peace of the Christian: confidence in God, indifference to all that is not God. It is the peace of our Lord himself. “My peace,” he says, “I give unto you.” Let us ask him indeed to give it to us, now and for evermore.

Five Minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year 
Imprimatur 1879