There are two things that Jesus promises to bring into our lives. Firstly, He brings God’s love and grace. He proclaims, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were blazing already,” referring to the grace and love of God made present in the flames of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
But Jesus also brings to us division—even from within our families. “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?” He asks. “No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three” (Lk. 12:49-53). He warns that we will face conflicts with others even as we bear His love and grace within us.
Why does Jesus bring these two contrasting realities—the consoling love of God and His grace on the one hand and, on the other hand, divisions and conflicts that threaten our inner peace?
I believe it is so that we can learn and mature in loving endurance. This means that, out of love for Jesus and by His grace, we do all the good that we can, while enduring the evils that we may experience in doing good. We are ready to endure evil as we love others for His sake.
We must learn from the saints who entered heaven through their loving endurance. “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us.” The saints pray and cheer for us, too, to practice this loving endurance till the end.
We also learn from Jesus’ example of loving endurance: “Keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.” He endured indescribable suffering out of love for the Father and now is glorified alongside Him; “For the sake of the joy that lay before Him, He endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken His seat at the right of the throne of God.” We are to derive strength from Jesus’ loving endurance of the suffering caused by those whom He loved and came to save: “Consider how He endured such opposition from sinners, in order that you may not grow weary or lose heart.”
If the Sinless One suffered dreadfully at the hands of sinners, how much more are we sinners going to suffer in the hands of our fellow sinners? Yet still, His sacrifice earned for us a lasting peace.
However, the peace of Christ cannot be automatic. We cannot just pray for peace and then experience it if we refuse to endure anything out of love for Him. His peace is not something that He establishes within us without our cooperation. His peace does not come from cowardly compromise with the world or avoiding the difficult realities of discipleship. His peace does not come from avoiding those whom we find difficult to love. On the contrary, the peace of Christ is the result of our firm choice to remain faithful to Him and His command to love others in the face of difficulties.
Can we endure the deluge of temptations that assail us daily out of love for Him? Do we easily give in to sin and then wonder why peace of heart eludes us? Are we tired of repenting from our sins and beginning again with greater trust and confidence in God? We lose our peace when we throw in the towel in our spiritual battles. Looking at the example of Jesus and the saints, we are challenged to endure the battle against sin in all its forms: “In your battle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.” Quitters in the struggles of the spiritual life cannot know the peace of Christ.
Can we endure people who are ingrates and insulting? Can we still do good to those who cannot tolerate us and our beliefs, who condemn us and highlight only our faults and failures? Can we endure in forgiving those who do not repent of the hurt they have caused us but continue to wound us? Can we still pray and make sacrifices for those who hate and persecute us? Can we love those who try our patience? How is our endurance when we are maligned, rejected, and misunderstood by others? We forfeit our peace the moment that we make a choice to withhold love from them for any reason.
Jesus warned us that, because we bear His name, many will hate us. It is only through our loving endurance that we will attain His eternal peace: “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved” (Mt. 10:22).
The letter to the Hebrews gives us this powerful response to the trials and tribulations of life, as we “[keep] our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” We are not to fix our attention on those who are difficult to love or those who cause us pain. Neither are we to keep our eyes on our sins. We must keep our eyes on Jesus alone to mature in our loving endurance through these trials.
Our Eucharistic Lord is truly present with us in all our struggles with sin and with sinful people like ourselves. Let us gaze upon Him always, especially in Eucharistic adoration, and receive from Him the first gift that He always brings to this world—the gift of God’s unconditional love for us and the grace to practice loving endurance for His sake.
Then let us accept His second gift to us—those painful divisions we cannot resolve. When we still choose to love others in the midst of these conflicts, then we will know the true peace that Jesus alone brings to us.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
