Tuesday of Fifth Week of Easter
April 30, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/043024.cfm

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Jesus said to his disciples:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
~ John 14:27

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Jesus did a lot to prepare his disciples for his suffering and death – sort of an “anticipatory grief” workshop! And the essential coping gift he gives them is peace. Not a peace that means free from trouble or conflict, but rather a peace like his own – one of being resolutely grounded in God.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We pray to be so deeply rooted in God that we see all experience through the lens of God’s peaceful abiding in our hearts.

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Poetry: Making Peace – Denise Levertov

A voice from the dark called out,
             ‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
                                   But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
                                       A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
                                              A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
                        A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.

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Music: Inner Peace – Hennie Bekker