Hope in the Time of Corona

There is an interesting congruence between the words spoken by Jesus to us on the 5^th Sunday of Easter, “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn. 13:34), and what He said to us this past Sunday: “Peace I leave with you: my peace I give to you” (Jn. 14:27).

The 5^th Sunday Psalm (Ps.145:8 & 9) offers a sort of definition of the love Jesus showed to his friends:

• The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness.
• The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.

To love another is to desire the good for the other in all things. It is to be gracious…to show mercy…to be slow in growing angry…to show kindness with the other. It is to enter into the suffering the other experiences to offer presence, hope, comfort and consolation.

Peace—shalom—is “to desire completeness, wholeness, health, peace, welfare, safety, soundness, tranquillity, prosperity, perfectness, rest, harmony…[Shalom is] to be complete, perfect and full.”[1]

Can you see how the two flow from one another and flow into one another?

To be peacemakers is to choose the way of peace willfully, consciously—for oneself, for others, and indeed, for everyone who occupies the planet with us at this moment.

To be people who enflesh the Lord’s love is to choose the way of love willfully, consciously—for oneself, for others, and indeed, for everyone who occupies the planet with us at this moment.

For this, we must necessarily – and humbly – acknowledge that we cannot do it on our own: we need the witness, strength, support, and efforts of others, and above all, we need the grace of God – the grace we encounter in Word and Sacrament.

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