IN
EXILE
By
Rev. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Jesus’
final gift to us is peace that no one can ever take away
Several years ago I was at
a symposium at which we were discussing the struggle many young people
have today with their faith. One of the participants, a young French
Canadian Oblate, offered this perspective:
“I work with university
students as a chaplain. They have a zest for life and an energy and
colour that I can only envy. But inside of all this zest and energy,
I notice that they lack hope because they don’t have a meta-narrative.
They don’t have a big story, a big vision that can give them perspective
beyond the ups and downs of their everyday lives. When their health,
relationships, and lives are going well, they feel happy and full of
hope; but the reverse is also true. When things aren’t going well
the bottom falls out of their world. They don’t have anything
to give them a vision beyond the present moment.”
In essence, what he is describing
might be called “the peace that this world can give us.”
In his farewell discourse, Jesus contrasts two kinds of peace: a peace
that he leaves us and a peace that the world can give us. What is the
difference?
The peace that the world
can give to us is not a negative or a bad peace. It is real and it is
good, but it is fragile and inadequate.
It is fragile because it
can easily be taken away from us. Peace, as we experience it ordinarily
in our lives, is generally predicated on feeling healthy, loved and
secure. But all of these are fragile. They can change radically with
one visit to the doctor, with an unexpected dizzy spell, with sudden
chest pains, with the loss of a job, with the rupture of a relationship,
with the suicide of a loved one or with multiple kinds of betrayal that
can blindside us. We try mightily to take measures to guarantee health,
security and the trustworthiness of our relationships, but we live with
a lot of anxiety, knowing these are always fragile. We live inside an
anxious peace.
As well, the peace we experience
in our ordinary lives never comes to us without a shadow. As Henri Nouwen
puts it, there is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments
of our life so that even in our most happy moments there is something
missing. In every satisfaction there is an awareness of limitation.
In every success there is fear of jealousy. In every friendship there
is distance. In every embrace there is loneliness. In this life there
is no such a thing as a clear-cut, pure joy. Every bit of life is touched
by a bit of death. The world can give us peace, except it never does
this perfectly.
What Jesus offers is a peace
that is not fragile, that is already beyond fear and anxiety, that does
not depend upon feeling healthy, secure and loved in this world. What
is this peace?
At the last supper and as
he was dying, Jesus offered us his gift of peace. And what is this?
It is the absolute assurance the we are connected to the source of life
in such a way that nothing, absolutely nothing, can ever sever —
not bad health, not betrayal by someone, indeed, not even our own sin.
We are unconditionally loved and held by the source of life itself and
nothing can change that. Nothing can change God’s unconditional
love for us.
That’s the meta-narrative
we need in order to keep perspective during the ups and downs of our
lives. We are like actors in a play. The ending of the story has already
been written and it is a happy one. We know that we will triumph in
the end, just as we know that we will have some rocky scenes before
that ending. If we keep that in mind, we can more patiently bear the
seeming death-dealing tragedies that befall us. We are being held unconditionally
by the source of life itself, God.
If that is true, and it is,
then we have an assurance of life, wholeness and happiness beyond the
loss of youth, the loss of health, the loss of reputation, the betrayal
of friends, the suicide of a loved one and even beyond our own sin and
betrayals. In the end, as Julian of Norwich says, all will be well,
and all will be well, and every manner of being will be well.
And we need this assurance.
We live with constant anxiety because we sense that our health, security
and relationships are fragile, that our peace can easily disappear.
We live too with regrets about our own sins and betrayals. And we live
with more than a little uneasiness about broken relationships and loved
ones broken by bitterness or suicide. Our peace is fragile and anxious.
We need to more deeply appropriate
Jesus’ farewell gift to us: I leave you a peace that no one can
take from you: Know that you are loved and held unconditionally.
Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX. He can be contacted through his website: www.ronrolheiser.com.
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