Peace by Understanding Power

My dear brothers and sisters, peace be with you! Have you ever thought about what this greeting in our Catholic tradition really means? I don’t know about you, but in the Chinese culture, when we talk about peace or offer a blessing for peace, we think of a smooth sailing day, a day or even a life of safety, when nothing unfortunate would happen to us. Is it the same in your own culture?

Based on this, therefore, when I first encountered the Catholic church, I had understood peace to be just that, that I will be safe and that all things will go well for me now.

Understanding peace in that manner really changes us. In some way, our expectation of life changes, because if we think that peace means safety and a life without storm, then we might get really frustrated, disappointed, or even fearful and misunderstand God, when something unexpected happens in our life.

During my time in the seminary, I served in prison ministry as my pastoral work for a year. Just like in Taiwan, people who want to help people in the prison must attend training with the prison department and within their own organization. The training taught us about the rules and security measures that we would have to observe, but also they also educated us about the dangers of the ministry. My pastoral supervisor told me on our first visit to the maximum-security section of the Cook County Jail that I am going to bring you in today through special permission because to formally allow you to go in, we need to make an ID that allows you to enter this division. I will not apply the ID for you until I know that you want to work here permanently, because the ID cannot be changed until after a year.

I was surprised by what he said because when I interviewed for the role, I had already agreed that I would serve the men in the maximum-security section. My training by the prison department was for that too. I think he could see that I was puzzled by what he said, and continued saying, “Matthew, you need to understand what it really means to be serving in the maximum-security division. The men you will meet will be loud, the place will be chaotic. During your first few visits, they will try to test you, they may threaten you, and some former volunteers who were careless and offended these men have been hurt before. This is not something that everyone could do.” To which, in my mind, I thought, “Nah, there’s nothing to be worried about, everything will go fine, I will be safe because I am doing God’s work.” Then, I thanked my pastoral supervisor and said that I would be careful.

During my first visit, I was still quite nonchalant about the whole situation. Well, until I had to go through the security. The security check was very, very thorough. The officer patted me down everywhere, asked me many questions. Then we had to take off anything that could be used as a weapon, and so, I had to leave my keys in a locker. The tight security startled me; I was beginning to sense that this is more dangerous than I thought. When I finally passed the check, I thought it was all over… but boy was I wrong, every next door I enter had another security screening. It took about 15 minutes before I actually saw the prisoners. When they were being led from one place to another, they were handcuffed, they had chains on their waist and ankles, again, this was a lot more serious than I thought. When we finally got to the prison cell, that was the real shocker, about 20 men were outside their individual cell and all of them turned to look at me. Then there was whistling, and some men in their cell started to bang on their door to get my attention. Men who were showering turned and stared at me, there were no doors in the showers, just curtains, some men stood naked and looked at me and made provocative gestures. Suddenly, I felt I was not there to help people, I was a target for these men. Suddenly, my peace was destroyed. I was terrified, I tried not show it. I just tried to ignore all the chaos that was happening and followed closely behind my pastoral supervisor. After we sat down, a huge man walked towards me in only a towel around his waist, he didn’t say anything, he just kept staring me down and walking around where we were seated, like a lion prowling to hunt for its prey. When he tried to sit down, my supervisor stopped him. He said sternly to him, “Not like this, go get dressed.” The man, almost double my size, then walked away.

That day, after the visit, my pastoral supervisor asked me if he should apply for the security pass for division 9. He kept telling me that it is OK if I didn’t want to. No one would judge me. His words pierced my heart, but out pride, pure pride, I told him that I could handle this situation… but things only got worse, and the most frightening one was after we reached the waiting area of the prisoners’ cell, there was an alarm and the whole place was on lockdown. We were told that we couldn’t leave because there was an incident. So, we stay in the waiting area and eventually learnt that there was a stabbing incident in one of the sections that I visited. I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Even though I kept going back, I was extreme afraid, especially when my supervisor was busy attending to a small group and I had to approach others to ask if they would like to talk. Many of them were really nice to me after they got to know me, and we shared many things about our life. But there was always this fear that was within me. This fear that followed me even after I leave the prison. I would have nightmares about something terrible happening to me in the prison, like being stabbed in the section that I visited.

Eventually, I told my supervisor the truth about what I was dealing with emotionally. And he told me that he knew that I was uncomfortable with the situation, but he was waiting for me to say it. Like what was said about God in the first reading, a gentle, watchful presence.

He shared me that he too, was really scared at first because right from the beginning, he had to start his ministry here alone with no one to guide him. He was shorter than me, so he too, was shocked when men almost twice his size came to him and asked him what his business was here. Like what happened to me, the men provoked him, made fun of him, made suggestive comments to him… And like me, he started to feel unsettled emotionally and spiritually. But then, one day, in his prayers, he was drawn to how Jesus was tortured and taunted on the way of the cross. How Jesus bore the insult and pain and even gave a blessing to one of the men who was nailed on another cross. More importantly, how when Jesus returned to the disciples, the first thing he said to them was “Peace be with you.”

Jesus showed us that peace, is not what we understand it to be. It does not mean that there would be no storm, no rain, no problems in our lives.

The disciples being tossed about by the waves, are like those of us who are struggling to understand why God is allowing all these terrible things to happen in our lives. And instead of moving closer to God, our fear, our insecurity begin to scream “It is a ghost” and think that only the presence of evil is here. When we do not believe in the promise of “Emmanuel”, God is with us, then we have surrendered to the power of evil, that is when our fear has overcome us, our disappointment pushes us into a dark void, and every grace that we had received, we bury it because we no longer believe, because we are afraid when we try to use it, we will be hurt again.

And this is what my supervisor told me, he said, “We can only do this work if we surrender ourselves to the Lord – meaning we trust the Lord fully that whatever happens, God is with us. And we need to truly believe in this.

Like what was mentioned in the 1st Book of Kings, God is not in the strong and heavy wind, God is not in the crushing rocks, God is not in the wind or the earthquake, and God is not in the fire. My brothers and sisters, God is not in those who bring fear to us, God is not in those who betray us, God is not in those who disappoint us, but God is with us, in all the negative experiences, watching over us as, Emmanuel, God is with us, and He is saying, “Come”, like he said to Peter. Come, out of all the troubles, disappointment, sadness, anger and hatred, come into my peace. And even when we stumbled when we make that journey toward Him, he will still stretch out his loving hand to catch us when we fall. That is the peace that He assures us, that He will always be there, in all the good and bad, celebrating and sharing the pain. He will be there when people try to hurt us. He will be there in every moment… and that is all that we need.

The sharing by my supervisor really changed me. His words help me to understand that God’s peace is an extraordinary peace. It isn’t about living a smooth-sailing life or that everything will be fine, because Jesus Himself, because of His kindness, suffered terrible things while He was on earth. But all the dangers and suffering he experience was because he chose to do the right thing, he was doing His Father’s will to reveal God’s love to the world… and the devil was trying to stop that from happening. The devil was trying to cause a huge storm to shake up the disciples, the evil one was trying to tempt Jesus into believing that it was him that could give him everything and not His Father in heaven. And maybe that is what is happening to us. That all the challenges we are facing, is to take us away from us the most powerful being, the most loving being, the source of the real peace in our lives. A peace that no storm can take away. A peace that allows us to stand in the midst of a storm and still believe that God is present in this too.

I continued to serve in the maximum-security division until the end of my assignment there. When the men tried to provoke me, I looked at them, smiled, and asked them if they wanted to sit down and read the bible together. I was no longer frightened by sudden loud noises because I was focus on being present to the people who were talking to me. The men in the prison soon noticed that what they were doing was not affecting me, what they noticed also, was that I was there to do good for them. I would listen to people, have conversations about life, I was there to be a friend. A good number of them started to join in the groups that would sit together to do bible study. One of the huge men who tried to intimidate me in my initial days there, came to me one day and asked if I could say a prayer for him, he had been in prison for many years but now, his sentence has been passed, and he would be moved to another prison soon. My supervisor saw what happened and smiled at me at a distance, reminding me that Jesus is standing there with him, watching over me.

My brothers and sisters, if you are dealing with a storm or even storms in your life, be it, that you are angry with someone, or you feel betrayed by someone, or you are feeling great sadness because someone you love is not around anymore, God has not left your life, God is here with us, always, and if we trust and listen carefully, He is saying “Come”, He is stretching His hand out to pull us out of the void that we feel that we are trapped within.

Peace being with you means just that, reminding us God is with us, and if God is with us, than why should we be afraid. If God is willing to sacrifice Himself on the cross to offer salvation to the world, if God is willing to become the Eucharist for us just so that we can enter into communion with Him, what more can we ask for?

My brothers and sisters, if you are carrying a heavy burden in your life right now, if you are in a middle of a storm in your life right now, I invite you to enter a moment of silence after communion and let these words of Christ echo in your heart, “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you”. It’s OK if it our lives look messy at the moment. God is with us!

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