I will Give You Peace"

Today's Mass Readings

In today’s first reading from the Book of the Prophet Haggai, we find God comforting His people. God’s people are saddened that the Temple they have worked so hard at constructing is not as glorious as Solomon’s Temple. God explains that He controls the flow of precious metals. He can bring forth more gold and precious stones than Solomon was able to muster. But this is not the reason for the glory of the Second Temple. But rather, as the last verse of the first reading says, "And in this place I will give you peace" (Hag 2:9). The Israelites did get peace a few years. But then the Greek took over their land and then the Romans come in and subjugated the people again. By the time of Jesus, it had been not quite 500 years since the Israelites had had self-rule. So was the Lord's promise of peace a lie?

The peace of which the Lord speaks, is not that not the absence of war. Rather, the peace of which the Lord speaks is connected with the Temple. The peace of which the Lord speaks has to do with reconciliation to the Lord and communion with the Lord. Jews would offer sacrifices to God in the Temple, and would sing psalms of penance and psalms of praise. It is the sacrifices and the praises, the prayers and worship of the people that bring the peace of which the Lord speaks.

In today's gospel reading we have Jesus predicting his passion, death and resurrection immediately after Peter Confessed him as the Messiah. Like Jesus, for us too, peace does not mean the absence of strife but a total union with God even in the midst of strife. This is the peace we wish each other at mass.

let us come to our God and experience a deep union with God in prayer and especially at mass. May our peace come from our being with God.