November 19, 2015
Thursday, 33rd Week in Ordinary Time
1st reading: 1 Mac 2:15-29
Gospel: Lk 19:41–44
When Jesus had come in sight of Jerusalem, he wept over it and said, “If only today you knew the ways of peace! But now your eyes are held from seeing. Yet days will come upon you when your enemies will surround you with barricades and shut you in and press on you from every side. And they will dash you to the ground and your children with you, and leave not a stone within you, for you did not recognize the time and the visitation of your God.
”D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
“Salom” which is the Hebrew word for peace is also used in its cognate verb form to refer to the act of finishing and completing. To the Hebrews then, peace is also understood as completeness, perfection, or a condition in which nothing is lacking. This the world could not give (John 14:27). In Yahweh one can obtain this kind of peace, since “Yahweh desires the peace of those who serve him (Psalm 35:27).”
When Jesus offered peace to the world in John 14:27, he was exercising a divine prerogative, since only God could give the kind of peace he was referring to. It was the kind of peace that the world can’t give because the peace he was offering was not the perfection of the social order. This explains why he was not interested in working for the defeat of the Roman conquerors – a defeat that could procure political freedom for Israel. What Jesus was offe-ring was inner peace, a fruit of spiritual mindedness (Romans 8:6). The way to this kind of peace was the subject of Jesus’ sighs in today’s Gospel reading.
The Church in Modern Times has identified four factors leading to peace. In Blessed John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), peace is attained though truth, justice, love and freedom. Truth does not always mean the absence of falsehood.
The second and third factors are Justice and Love. These must be taken together, for in the mind of God, justice must always be tempered by love. Were we to attain justice at the expense of love, peace would still be wanting. The fourth factor is Freedom. This virtue must permeate the totality of the human person. A woman, for example, who pays all her debts from money gained through prostitution may achieve external freedom but condemns her inner self to perpetual bondage.
With the difficulty of complying with these factors, it appears that peace is impossible to attain. But we can still achieve it if we stay close to God, since “Yahweh desires the peace of those who serve him (Psalm 35:27).” – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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