Peace is resting in the Lord

Advent 2024: A Pilgrimage of Hope towards Peace - the Journey Explained!

Second Wednesday in Advent - December 11, 2024

Isaiah 40: 25-31; Matthew 11: 28-30

On our journey of hope, towards understanding what peace is all about, we are instructed today: peace is resting in the Lord. Resting, not in the sense of passive inaction, but in terms of active surrender to the Lord. There are two reasons given today to surrender to the Lord apart from the one usual cause – our helplessness. We try all our possibilities and resources, and when we find everything is failing, then we turn to the Lord and say, we surrender. That surrender is a sign or result of failure and it will not have anything to do with peace or serenity; it will be filled with remorse and revenge.

The real peace-giving surrender to the Lord, instead comes from, first and foremost the profound belief that God is my strength, as the first reading teaches to us. This is the fundamental disposition that I need to grow in – simple measures that we have been taught from our earliest age: beginning anything we do with a prayer, beginning the day with the act of faith, the act of love etc., are means to remind ourselves that the Lord is our strength. All the capacity that we have comes from the Lord, without whom we are nothing. That is one unfailing source of peace. 

A second reason for surrendering to the Lord is a realisation of our limitedness. Our limitedness need not disturb us, discourage us or dissuade us from our ongoing journey! For when the Lord is with us, we shall run but shall not grow weary, we shall walk and never tire, because “His Grace is sufficient for us.” When we rest in the Lord, our hearts are at peace! “Come” the Lord invites, that is an invitation to surrender ourselves in hope to the Lord. How disposed are we?