Peace is Child's Play! It's Obedience!

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

Second Friday in Advent - December 13, 2024

Isaiah 48: 17-19; Matthew 11: 15-19

Peace is child’s play, seems to suggest the Word today. We mean it… in the very sense of the idiom – it is a child’s play, if we are keen about understanding the commandments of the Lord and ready to live it to their spirit. That is what Jesus said – I have not come to abolish the law, after all the changes that he was bringing in, like the fire he wanted already ablaze. Yes, he wanted the fulfilment of the law, the summation of all the commandments, in love!

In the Gospel today, we see Jesus narrating that parable to bring home to us the classic difference between what is childish and what is child-like! To become like children is not to become childish – wanting to do all that one wishes to or feels like, and worse still, wanting every one to do what one wants or desires! Growing childlike, is growing in obedience. Is that not why, one of the most oft-repeated instruction to a child, in any society, is: be obedient to your elders. Obedience is the essence of childhood! 

Peace, therefore, is child’s play, or a child’s way of living life. Obeying the commands of the Lord – listening to the Word and making it our life – that is a sure way to Peace. It is obvious, because by obedience we do away with anxiety, preoccupations, burden of judgement, temptation of egoism and occasions of rebellion. In short, we become children… and for children, peace is an ordinary state of being.