God’s peace vs the world’s peace

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In the Gospel from today’s Mass, Our Lord promises His disciples, “Peace I leave with you: my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you.” (John 14:27). This is one of these verses that people get wrong because we don’t understand what Our Lord means by peace.

When the world talks about “peace”, it really means “an absence of strife”. We say countries are at peace because they’re not currently exchanging bullets or dropping bombs on each other. We say people are at peace because they’re not currently attacking each other and name calling. The world even promotes material and emotional peace that is basically another word for high self-esteem.

Our Lord’s peace, however is different. To demonstrate the peace Our Lord gives, let’s compare a couple preachers: the Osteens and St. Paul.

Just one example of the many books the Osteens have published.

If you’re not familiar with Joel Osteen and his wife Victoria, they’re preachers at the Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. According to Wikipedia, the church was originally founded by Joel Osteen’s father, but Joel has really expanded it. The current building is actually a former sports arena that seats nearly 17,000 people, and is usually packed for each service.

Sounds impressive, right? Some might wish we in the Catholic Church could do the same. The problem with Joel and Victoria is that their message is not the fullness of Christianity. Oh, they claim to be Christian preachers, but what they proclaim is more or less a self-help spirituality with Christian ideas sprinkled in.

In case you have the stomach for it, here are the most recent videos from both Joel and Victoria:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxDvRPHEdZg

Some might say, “Well, that don’t sound too bad. After all, it starts from the Scriptures.” True, but they use the Scriptures to promote typical self-help nonsense. “Thinking with the mind of Christ” does not mean “Champion mentality” and “Enjoying the life God gave you” (from Victoria’s video). Interestingly, the video from Joel even talks about “peace stealers”, not understanding that he’s talking about the world’s peace and not God’s peace. Their message is all about “being happy”.

In contrast, let’s look at St. Paul in the first reading today. He was stoned (literally, as in having rocks thrown at him, not merely smoking marijuana) and dragged out of the city. Was he “enjoying the life God gave him” at that moment? Probably not, but he got up and went right back to his work of evangelization. Because of his faithfulness to Christ, St. Paul brought thousands of people to baptism and was one of the main driving forces behind the early Church’s rapid growth.

St. Paul realized that suffering was a part of following Jesus, but he also realized and experienced the true peace Our Lord wishes to give us. This peace is not merely a “warm fuzzy”; it’s far deeper than anything the world can give. It’s a spiritual recognition of the love of God, and the consolation that leads us deeper into our relationship with Christ. It gives us the strength to stand up the stones – whether literally or figuratively – that the world wants to throw at us. We may even be able to rejoice over the mistreatment we receive at the hands of the world as the Apostles did. (Acts 5:41) It is the grace of God working in our lives, leading us to salvation and giving us the desire to bring as many people as we can with us.

This is the peace we should desire. Not the Osteens’ worldly feel-good peace, but the true peace from Our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the peace that can truly make us “bounce back” (to use Victoria Osteen’s words) from the stones of the world, and desire His salvation all the more.

Not merely saying no

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It’s sad to say, but many people think the Church just says no. No, you shouldn’t shack up with your boyfriend. No, you shouldn’t use contraceptives. No, you shouldn’t get drunk or use drugs. And so on. Because they think the Church just says no, little wonder why we’re having a hard time getting our children to stay in the Church. We just sound like a bunch of prudes who don’t want anyone to have fun.

That’s not the message they should be hearing. In today’s Gospel at Mass, Our Lord tells His Apostles, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?” He also tells them, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He gives them a message of hope and joy; a message that needs to be heard today.

We need to be telling people, “We have a better way.” We need to bring Christ to them, and allow them to develop a real relationship with Him. Then, when they understand the need to follow Him and desire to be His disciple, we present the moral teachings out of love and a desire to help them as they grow deeper in His love. If people don’t know who Jesus is and why it’s so important and life giving to follow Him, why would they care about following His teachings, especially in the area of morality?

This isn’t to say that we should get rid of the moral teachings of the Church. On the contrary, we need to be striving daily to live in conformity with Her teachings, as they have been given to Her by Christ Himself, and should always seek to grow in our observances of His commandments. This also doesn’t mean we need to stop fighting the moral decay of our world, but it does mean we need to find a track that leads people to Christ and not be pushed away by the “no.”

Our job as Christians is to go out and evangelize the world. We won’t be effective if the world just hears “no” from us. It needs to hear that there’s something better than how they’re living now, and allow Our Lord to guide them to following His teachings.

Podcast Listening: My Stogie Mystagogy

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(Podcasting has had kind of an interesting history. It’s been a part of the “new media” for at least 10 years, but seems to be going through a renewal in the past couple years. New podcasts are starting on a regular basis, older podcasts are being refreshed or transitioned into different formats, and more tools are making podcasting – both listening and producing – more readily accessible.

I’ve been making an effort to explore and listen to more podcasts, and I want to share podcasts I find interesting. These may not always be specifically Catholic, but definitely worth checking out.)

What caught my interest about the first podcast is the name: My Stogie Mystagogy. Cigars are not something that I generally find interesting, as I prefer relaxing to a good cocktail or beer over smoking something. However, the title gives a good image of what the podcast is about: two guys relaxing in a “man cave”, smoking cigars, and talking about living the Catholic faith.

Don Gonzalez and Mark Connelly are the hosts of this brand new podcast which currently has 2 episodes (plus a “test” episode). While the show begins with a brief discussion of the cigars they’ve chosen to smoke during the recording, most of the show is spent in conversation about the given topic for the episode – along with the expected tangents and rabbit trails that is part of any good conversation between friends. The quality and depth of topics covered already is quite impressive.

There is a little “new podcast” roughness to the episodes, though I’m sure they’ll work that out as they go. It seems as if they’re using a good quality tabletop recorder, but they’re not always the same distance from it. This causes the sound levels to fluctuate, which can mean the occasional point where one or the other is too far away from the recorder. Also, the bumpers in between the segments is quite a bit louder than the rest of the recording.

Obviously, these are minor concerns that Don and Mark should be able to iron out as they go. This seems like a podcast worth a subscription, and looks to become a very good podcast as they iron out the bugs. I look forward to hearing more, and possibly learning a little about the joys of smoking a good cigar.

Homily Podcast Update

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As I mentioned before, my homily recordings are available in podcast form. Previously it was available only via iTunes, Stitcher, and a direct RSS feed, but I can now announce another way that Android users can get their podcasts (including mine): Google has finally released podcasts on Google Play Music! As is par for the course when Google rolls out a new feature, not everyone will have it right away, but eventually every Android user will have podcasts available through the Google Play Music app.

I set up the feed via Google’s Podcast Portal months ago when it was first announced, so it’s ready to go now! You can subscribe here, use the podcast links on the sidebar, or you may be able to search for it via the Google Play Music app. (It hasn’t rolled out to me yet, so I’ll update this when I can verify for myself.)

Also, small teaser, but hopefully a new podcast will be coming out in the near future. Stay tuned…