Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Religious
"If this day you only knew what makes for peace." I feel like this quote from Luke's gospel is speaking to our nation and our world today. If we knew today what would bring about peace - would we be willing to do it? Would we be willing to set aside our agendas, our personal interests and our desires if it meant that we could bring about peace? I hope and pray that we would, but I am not so sure.
After watching this last election cycle in our nation, seeing the division, the anger, the hurt and the hatred that were stirred up on all sides, I am struggling with how we will bring peace out of this brokenness.
So we have to dig deeper - when we dig a little deeper into our first reading, from the book of Revelations, we may get some idea of what makes for peace. This reading is centered around a scroll. This scroll is written on both sides, which is said to symbolize a complete message and it is sealed 7 times - meant to show perfection. So this perfect, complete message is held on this scroll. What does perfect, complete message contain? I imagine it contains a message of salvation - one that we will not fully understand until we have died.
And who is able to bring about the complete perfect message? Only the lamb who has been slain. It is only through Jesus that we will come to know of salvation. And I believe that part of our salvation will be peace - a peace different than any kind of peace we will experience in this world. So maybe we do know what will make for peace - Jesus. Knowing, loving and following Jesus.
And Jesus shows us that we must love - in radical and counter-cultural ways. We must love God enough to commit ourselves to intentional, focused prayer. We may not have 40 days to go into the desert but we surely have 40 minutes a day to commit to prayer. We must love ourselves enough to sacrifice worldly treasures for the joy of the kingdom - which will never feel easy. And we must love those around us enough to treat all people with dignity - whether we agree with them or not. We must lovingly challenge people. We must hold people accountable. And we must strive to be living witnesses of Christ - in all that we say and do. And this is when we will learn what makes for peace.
- Amanda Grimm