Pray for Peace in the World

God’s Greatest Gift – His Peace

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Photo: Patricia Enk

“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” (John 14:27)

In His discourse at the Last Supper Jesus gives to his disciples, and to us, the gift of His peace. He leaves it “with” us. Most people would think of peace as a state of being undisturbed, tranquil or quiet. But Jesus tells us at the same time not to “let our hearts be troubled or fearful.” We must must somehow preserve this peace while living, as did the first disciples, in a disturbing, troubling, and frightening anti-Christian world. It is a paradox. What is this “gift” of His peace — a peace that can remain with us while the world around has gone mad? 

The world offers its own sort of “peace” but it is at the price of rejecting Jesus Christ and His Cross. It is the false peace of tolerance and acquiescence — getting along, or going along with the prevailing culture — in the hope that by submission to its unceasing demands we will somehow be left alone to live our lives, losing none of our comforts or security. Anyone accepting this false type of peace however will ultimately lose everything, including eternal salvation. There is no real peace apart from Jesus Christ.

Holy Face of Jesus of Manoppello (photo: Paul Badde/EWTN)

Pope Benedict XVI wrote that the revelation of the Face of God took on a new and beautiful manifestation when God became man in the person of Jesus Christ. As fully God and fully man, Jesus Christ gave us a human face that revealed the Face of God. “While we too seek other signs, other wonders, we do not realize that He is the real sign, God made flesh; He is the greatest miracle of the universe: all the love of God hidden in a human heart, in a human face!” Something new happens at the Incarnation, because now God’s Face can be seen: The Son of God was made man and He is given a Name, Jesus.

God, our loving Father, offers us a gift of true peace that is so much greater than anything the world has to offer, if only we turn back to His Face. God has a Face and a Name,  “the concrete sign of His existence” which He has shown us through His Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. “To express ourselves in accordance with the paradox of the Incarnation we can certainly say that God gave Himself a human face, the Face of Jesus, and consequently, from now on, if we truly want to know the Face of God, all we have to do is to contemplate the Face of Jesus! In His Face we truly see who God is and what He looks like!” – Pope Benedict XVI 

It was on the World Day of Peace 2013 that Pope Benedict spoke about the blessing of the priests of the people of Israel. The blessing repeats the three-times Holy Name of God, a Name not to be spoken, and each time linked to two words indicating an action in favor of man:

“May the Lord bless and keep you, may He make His Face shine upon you and be gracious to you: May the Lord turn His Face toward you and give you His PEACE.” (Num. 6: 22-27)

“Peace is the summit of these six actions of God in our favor, His most sublime gift, in which He turns toward us the splendor of His Face.” -Pope Benedict XVI

Moreover, Pope Benedict wrote, “To rejoice in the splendor of His Face means penetrating the mystery of His Name made known to us in Jesus, understanding something of His interior life and of His will, so that we can live according to His plan for humanity. Jesus lets us know the hidden Face of the Father through His human Face; by the gift of the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts.” This, the pope says, is the foundation of our peace, which nothing can take from us.

Limpias Crucifix

Benedict XVI has characterized devotion to the Holy Face as having three separate components: 1. Discipleship – an encounter with Jesus, to see Jesus in the Face of those in need. 2. The Passion of Jesus, and suffering expressed by images of the wounded Face of Jesus. 3. The Eucharist, “the great school in which we learn to see the Face of God,”  which is woven between the other two. The eschatological element then builds on awakening to Christ by contemplating His Face hidden in the Eucharist. “In the Eucharist, the Face of Christ is turned toward us.” – Pope St. John Paul II

“Our whole life should be directed toward encountering Him,” writes Benedict, “toward loving Him; and in it, a central place must be given to love of one’s neighbor, that love that in the light of the Crucified One, enables us to recognize the Face of Jesus in the poor, the weak, the suffering.” In short, to enter into a relationship with Jesus and to follow Him. The pope goes on to explain the fruits of this contemplation: “From contemplation of the Face of God are born, joy, security, PEACE.” Peace, not as the world gives, but the peace which can only come from Jesus Christ. “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:7)

Listen to my voice, Lord, when I call
. . . Your Face, Lord, do I seek!
Hide not Your Face from me!
-Psalm 27

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“Abide in peace, banish care, take no account of all that happens. And you will serve God according to His good pleasure.” — St. John of the Cross 

“…and if my people, upon whom my name has been pronounced, humble themselves and pray, and seek My Face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear them from Heaven and pardon their sins and revive their land.” (2 Chr. 7:4)

Prayer to the Holy Face for the liberation from the coronavirus
 
Lord Jesus, Savior of the world, hope that will never disappoint us, have mercy on us and deliver us from all evil! Please overcome the scourge of this virus which is spreading, heal the sick, preserve the healthy, support those who work for the health of all. Show us your face of mercy and save us in your great love. We ask you through the intercession of Mary, Your Mother and ours, who faithfully accompanies us. You who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.
+ Bruno Forte
Archbishop of Chieti – Vasto (Italy)
 
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Peace is Within Our Reach – Contemplating the Face of Christ with Mary

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Dear Readers,  

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has asked the faithful to join him on May 1st in praying the rosary for peace, especially in Syria, and to pray the rosary each day in May with peace as the intention.  So, for the beautiful month of May, dedicated to Our Mother Mary, I hope you will not mind this re-post from Oct. 7. 2017, “To Bring Peace to the World.”  Please join in the Holy Father’s intention in praying the Rosary…peace is within our reach!

(Please include in your rosary intentions: “Protect Ireland from abortion” Peace in the womb)

                        “To Bring Peace to the World”

“Do not be afraid, I will not harm you.  I come from heaven…Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the conversion of sinners?  Then you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort.” –The words of Our Lady to the three shepherd children of Fatima.

One hundred years ago, on May 13th, 1917, the Blessed Mother appeared to three children in Portugal with a message from Heaven for the world.  She requested that the children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, come on the 13th of the month for the next six months. Our Lady told the children that Jesus wanted to use the children to make His mother known and loved, and to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary throughout the world.  In each apparition, the Blessed Mother asked that the Rosary be prayed every day “to bring peace to the world.” In her last visit on October 13th, 1917, she told the children, “I am the Lady of the Rosary.”

“To bring peace to the world” is no little thing.  The world is filled with division, violence, and death.  It would take a miracle of God to bring peace from the chaos that surrounds us.  God has always willed to show forth His power and glory through the smallest and weakest.  He has sent his own Mother to earth with a delicate Rosary in her hands as an unlikely but powerful weapon against evil, if only we co-operate with His Divine Plan by praying it.  It is not a vain repetition of words, but the contemplation of the Face of Christ through the eyes of His Mother; and therein lies its power.

Contemplating the Face of Christ with Mary

Pope St. John Paul II

When he placed the New Millennium under “the Radiant sign of the Face of Christ” Pope St. John Paul II wrote:

“To contemplate the Face of Christ, and to contemplate it with Mary, is the ‘program’ which I have set before the Church at the dawn of the third millennium…It is the Church’s task to reflect the light of Christ in every historical period, to make His Face shine also before new generations of the new millennium. Our witness, however, would be hopelessly inadequate if we ourselves had not first contemplated His Face.” 

The Rosary is a traditional Christian prayer directed to the contemplation of Christ’s Face. “Without contemplation, the Rosary is a body without a soul,” says Pope St. John Paul II, “and runs the risk of becoming a mechanical repetition of formulas, in violation of the admonition of Christ.”

Virgin and Child,1510

Contemplation is a gift, a grace, from God. It is a communion in which God transforms a soul into His likeness. To put it more simply, as St. Teresa of Jesus says, contemplation is “a close sharing between friends…taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.”  Contemplation is not something beyond our reach however–we have an incomparable model in Mary; the eyes of her heart were always turned toward His Face. To dispose our souls to receive this great gift of God we need only reach for a Rosary and pray it with humility, listening attentively in the Spirit together with Mary, in silent love–that veil of mystery–to the Father’s voice. When we contemplate the scenes or mysteries of the Rosary in union with Mary, the Rosary becomes an unceasing praise of God; a way to learn from her about her son, Jesus, to discover His secrets and understand His message for us.

To recite the Rosary, which can be called a compendium of the Gospel, Pope St. John Paul II says, “is to contemplate the Face of Christ in union with, and at the school of, His Most Holy Mother…Against the background of the words of the Ave Maria the principal events of the life of Jesus Christ pass before the eyes of the soul. They take shape in the complete seriesIMG_0915-1 of the joyful, [luminous,] sorrowful and glorious mysteries, and they put us in living communion with Jesus through–we might say through the heart of his Mother…The Rosary belongs among the finest and most praiseworthy traditions of Christian contemplation…To look upon the Face of Christ, to recognize its mystery amid the daily events and sufferings of His human life, and then to grasp the divine splendor definitively revealed in the Risen Lord, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father; this is the task of every follower of Christ and therefore the task of each one of us. In contemplating Christ’s Face we become open to receiving the mystery of Trinitarian life, experiencing ever anew the love of the Father and delighting in the joy of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul’s words can then be applied to us ‘Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being changed into His likeness, from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’” (Rosarium Virginus Mariae) 

"The contemplation of Christ's Face cannot stop at the image of the Crucified One. He is the Risen One!"~St. Pope John Paul II
“The contemplation of Christ’s Face cannot stop at the image of the Crucified One. He is the Risen One!”~ Pope St. John Paul II, ( Holy Face of Manoppello – the Sudarium of Christ, Photo: Patricia Enk)

By keeping our eyes fixed on the Face of Jesus as we pray the Rosary, together with Mary, through her maternal intercession, we may obtain great victories through the heart of her Son Jesus, who obtained for all mankind the greatest victory over sin and death by His Resurrection.

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“I dare to summon the whole Church bravely to cross this new threshold, to put into the deep…so that now as in the past the great engagement of the Gospel and culture may show to the world ‘the glory of God on the Face of Christ’ (2 Cor 4:6). May the Lord bless all those who work for this aim.”  ~Pope St. John Paul II