PEACE-LENT 2023 - Peace is Lord-centered

The WORD in LENT - Second week, Thursday

March 9, 2023: Jeremiah 17: 5-10; Luke 16: 19-31

Happy the one who has placed one's trust in the Lord. The Word today draws home to us an important consideration regarding peace of mind and heart, in our daily life. Let us reflect on it in three steps.

One. Peace first of all cannot be achieved, much less can it be achieved by a self centered way of life. "Me, myself and mine" can never allow me to think of the others and of their good. What matters to me would be the absolute for me: my career, my personal wishes and desires, my personal dreams etc.! The one who lives his life just at my doorstep would matter nothing to me for it is never within my perspective. Whatever peace is there, is really precarious!

Two. Not even an other centered life would lead me to true peace, because it would make me dependent on the other, the other's choices and idiosyncracies! My values would be warped and influenced greatly by the goodness or the wiles of the other. I would relativise everything because of the other and I would have no absolute reference point to guide myself. Would that make my life truly peaceful, guess it won't.

Three. The right way to true peace is, to live a Lord-centered life. This kind of a life, Jeremiah compares it to a tree planted on the banks of a river! Maybe we can think of another imagery too - a forest of trees, each of their planted and stuck in their places, but underneath, beneath the soil, all their roots point towards, strive towards, stretch towards one direction, the same direction, the direction where there is a source of water! That is nature! That is true peace - when we stretch towards the Lord, when our life is centered on the Lord.  Here the Lord shall be the absolute reference point and nothing would be relativised. There would be absolute peace. 

It is a Lord-centered life that can take me to true peace. Let us check if we are engaged in a Lord centered life, and peace would find its place without much difficulty!