Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Do not let your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me (John 14:1).

The peace that must inhabit our hearts is a gift from God. It requires some effort on our part, and that may need some work to accomplish it. But that peace is a gift to be welcomed; a grace to request and to receive.

Only God can truly communicate peace to us—our human efforts are insufficient.

It is good to meditate on the Scriptural texts that speak to us about peace as a gift from God. The most significant passages can be found in St. John's Gospel.

After having washed the feet of His disciples, Our Lord spoke to them for a long time during this last meal that He shared with them. He leaves them with a spiritual testament before entering into His Passion.

At the beginning of Chapter 14 of John’s Gospel, we find the words, Do not let your hearts be troubled. The disciples are upset and worried because of everything that's going on in Jerusalem as the hostility against Our Lord was getting stronger and stronger.

The first thing that Our Lord asks of them is to calm down. They must not let themselves get upset, and they need to keep an attitude of faith.

Our Lord asks this of them so that they can hear all the important things that He has to say to them.

An upset heart is often incapable of hearing God's Word, while a peaceable heart can allow it to penetrate deeply.

A little later, Our Lord speaks to them about the coming of the Holy Spirit. He gives them a magnificent promise: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you (John 14:27).

Our Lord is soon going to leave His disciples, but He promises them the grace of the Holy Spirit, and He leaves them this precious gift of peace.

The peace that Jesus promises is not the peace of this world. It's not the tranquility of everything going well; of problems resolved and desires satisfied, which would be a fairly rare peace.

The peace that Our Lord promises is a peace that can be experienced even in difficult and uncertain situations because it has its source and foundation in God.

A little while later, at the conclusion of His long discourse at the Last Supper, His last words invoke the theme of peace again: I have said these to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world (John 16:33).

It’s as though the ultimate goal of all these words that Jesus tells His disciples is to establish them in peace. You have to find peace in the certainty of Christ's victory over all the evil forces that upset the world. Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

At the same time, Our Lord shows us what the secret of our peace is. The true source of peace is Our Lord Himself. We can try to listen to His words that He says to us, and put faith, trust, prayer, and love there, which allows us to welcome God's peace into our hearts. The more peaceful I am, the more God acts.

The search for interior peace is more than just acquiring it for psychological tranquility. It is something much more profound: it's about opening ourselves to God's action.

I saw an advertisement for a new block of flats that had gone up recently. The advertisement was very well phrased in a beautiful place on a big billboard.

But one phrase there caught my eye. It says, “This block of flats, this future home for you, is nestled in idyllic tranquility.”

We might have a beautiful home. It might be “nestled in idyllic tranquility.” But we might not have peace in our hearts.

One very simple truth that is of great spiritual significance is, ‘The more we tend towards peace, the more the grace of God can act in our lives.’

St. Seraphim of Sarov has said: Acquire the spirit of peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved.

Like a peaceful lake perfectly reflects the sun, so a peaceful spirit is receptive to the action and the movements of the Holy Spirit.

Another writer says that the devil does his utmost to banish peace from one's heart because he knows that God abides in peace and it is in peace that God accomplishes great things. Very often, lack of peace or disunity or lack of harmony can be a result of the devil.

St. Francis de Sales says, Because love can only reside in peace, always be careful to keep the holy tranquility of heart that I so often recommend to you.

Fighting. to keep our peace—fighting against worry, anxieties, or agitations—are indispensable conditions for letting God act, in that way allowing us to grow in love and give our lives over to the fruitfulness to which we are called.

There may be certain things in life that can affect our nerve chemistry that might rob us of a certain peace, and we have to use all the medical means that are available to restore that.

But the peace we are speaking about here is deeper in our hearts, which can be there in spite of any external, natural agitation that might be present.

When we are not at peace—when we are filled with all sorts of anxieties—we can be at the mercy of our emotions, and we don't have an objective or accurate outlook on life. We can be tempted to see everything darkly and to doubt everything in our lives.

But when we are at peace, we see clearly.

St. Ignatius of Loyola distinguishes periods of consolation and desolation in the spiritual life. He suggests not to make decisions concerning our life during the latter, when we are going through troubled times. We should simply remain faithful to what we decided during the last period of peace, and we should wait for peace to come back again, before making any life-changing decision.

When a problem comes up that can make us lose our peace, the urgency is not in resolving the problem in the hope of regaining peace.

The urgency is in first recovering some minimum amount of peace, and then seeing what we can do with the problem. In that way, we avoid making hasty or precipitous choices governed by fear, and we avoid trying to resolve problems out of our power at any cost.

How can we recover that minimum of peace?

Essentially, by trusting in God: with fervent prayer, making acts of faith and of hope, and recalling the words of Scripture that invite us to a greater trust. Do not let your hearts be troubled (John 14:1).

One place for peace is in prayer. One fundamental way of acquiring interior peace is faithfulness to our plan of prayer. Sometimes we lack peace because we don't pray sufficiently.

Our peace doesn't find its source simply in human realities. It finds its source in God. And that's where we have to look for it.

It's logical that the more we are in communication with God, the more we find peace. One writer says every day in prayer, God gives us an all-new peace.

This is a beautiful reality. In God, there is an energy and a fantastic life, but there is also a profound peace. St. Paul speaks of God as “the God of peace” (Phil. 4:9).

God is an abyss of peace; an ocean of peace. Each time that we are in real contact with Him, some of this divine peace descends into our hearts.

We have all had this experience from time to time. We might be very anxious about something that thing might leave us feeling troubled and worried, but if we spend some time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, or we say our Rosary calmly, at the end of that time of prayer, we feel more tranquil.

The overall situation may be the same; it hasn't changed. But we are different. Our heart is more at rest.

Even though that prayer may be very simple, or very poorly done, it was done with faith. It's put us in contact with God. It's the peace of God. God's peace has come to rest in our hearts.

Isaiah talks about the “river of peace” (Isa. 48:18) that prayer gives us. Sometimes it's simply little drops. Maybe I'm suffering; I'm not completely tranquil psychologically. But some drops of God's peace have entered my heart. “The spark of the soul,” as some writers have called it.

That suffices for me to live through things differently, for me to be more confident and stronger in facing situations.

This faithfulness to prayer is something urgent. It's not in front of the television, or in browsing the Internet, or in endless conversations with others that we find peace. Sometimes those things can leave us more agitated than before.

Before the Blessed Sacrament, in front of Jesus, we always find a modicum of the peace that we need. It's enough to take the necessary time to be before Him, with an attitude of faith and hope, to be poor in spirit. Expect everything from God's mercy and He will visit us.

Sometimes, it's an obligation for us to take the time to pray until we regain our peace, and in that way not to make our fears and worries weigh on others. It's a requirement of being charitable. It's necessary to take this time.

If our prayer is often nourished by Holy Scripture, there can be moments in life when only the Word of God has enough force, enough authority, to permit us to regain the peace that we have lost. Our human reason is often insufficient. But the Word of God is effective.

Our peace can be a fruit of trust. If we ask ourselves—what are the essential conditions for me to get peace?—we'd have to say the first is trust, an absolute trust in the mercy of God and in His fidelity.

I am with you always even until the end of the world (Matt. 28:20).

That peace isn't always easy to practice. We don't always have sensory proof of God's love and His presence. Life sometimes brings us the heavy burden of suffering and dissolution. But that trust is necessary.

And even if God leads us on paths that aren't always those we would want, He never betrays our trust.

St. Paul says to the Romans, Hope does not disappoint us (Rom. 5:5).

The principal enemy of our peace is not exterior circumstances, our attitudes, and others. It's our lack of faith and trust in God that makes us lose our certainty that He can draw good out of anything and that He will never abandon us.

All things turn out for the good for those who love God (Rom. 8:28).

If we truly had faith, every difficult thing that happened to us wouldn't be able to trouble our peace. The mountains of worry that sometimes come would be quickly thrown into the sea.

The second essential condition for peace of heart is telling God “yes” without hesitation, which means completely opening our hearts to Him and being determined to refuse nothing to Him.

That doesn't mean that we must be perfect all of a sudden. But we have to let God have full permission to enter our lives and lead us as He desires.

To desire the will of God in all things isn't always easy. We're often attacked by fear precisely because we lack this faith and trust. We don't believe enough that God wants our happiness.

Sometimes we might have a terrible fear of giving ourselves completely to God because we don't know where that will lead us and we would prefer to remain masters of our destiny, to be sure that everything goes according to our desires.

But that's a bad calculation. We don't really know what is good for us. Only God really knows. It's much better to trust Him and leave ourselves in His hands.

Everything in our life that was not given to God, sooner or later, becomes a source of worry. And we're left then to manage it by ourselves with our resources, our own light. This could create a lot of anxiety for us.

On the contrary, if we have given everything to God, we're freed from this burden of having to resolve everything by ourselves. It's the Lord who will take care of it. And He will do it better than we can.

In St. Matthew we're told, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matt. 11:28-30).

Life is lighter and simpler when we've given everything to God. When we seek only God, we're always at peace. Those who look to themselves and want to manage and control their existence on their own can be loaded down with heavy cares.

One of the great enemies of interior peace is the attachment to our own ideas and our own will. So, detachment can be a source of peace. We have the right to desire and want things. But we have always to retain a certain freedom of heart, without worrying if things don't go as we would have wished.

This detachment is itself founded on trust. God knows better than we do what will make us grow. He wants our true happiness even more than we do. The bigger the trust, the more we will be free and the more we will find peace.

One of the sources of peace in our life can be humility.

People who are motivated by pride will never find true peace. They think that they're better than others. They’re filled with judgments or disdain. They pretend to be self-sufficient and capable of doing everything better than others.

They also want to control and manage their lives according to their own wisdom, which they estimate as the best. They load themselves up with big concerns.

Because of this, they can experience every failure more dramatically. Every situation reveals their limits, their errors, their weaknesses. They always feel menaced, always feel obliged to defend their image and their brand. They may have the pretension of presenting a perfect image of themselves without faults, which winds up being a heavy weight.

They can constantly be asking themselves: what do others think of me? They can see others as rivals or as threats. And they can run the risk of enclosing themselves in perfectionism—a pretense of doing everything perfectly, of being the best in everything—which can create constant stress. This type of perfectionism can be one of the worst enemies of peace of heart.

The attitude of the humble person is different.

When they're confronted with their limits, their weaknesses, and their errors, they accept them all peacefully. When something happens that shows that they're imperfect, or they fall into some error, they're not despondent or discouraged. They remain tranquil.

These people get up right away and throw themselves with trust into the arms of their heavenly Father. They put all their hope in the mercy of God, not in themselves.

They accept with simplicity that they're capable of falling, of making mistakes, and that they need forgiveness. They accept the fact of not being in a position to save themselves, but rather, that of receiving salvation as a free gift of God's mercy.

They're even happy to depend entirely on the goodness of God.

Prideful people will always be at war with someone.

They're at war with God because they refuse to let themselves be led like little children and be molded by the wisdom of God.

They're at war with others because of jealousy, because they disdain them or see them as rivals. They're always in competition with others, which in the end is quite tiring.

They're at war within themselves, because they don't accept the weaknesses, the poverty that exist in every person.

They're at war with life because they pretend to be successful in everything, refusing any circumstance that unveils their poverty, or their weakness, or their fragility.

Humble people, on the other hand, will be at peace with God. They submit to Him and let Him educate them like children.

They'll be at peace with others, because they accept others as they are, and remain open to them, not in competition with anybody.

They'll be at peace with themselves, because they accept their own weakness and imperfections. They're not worried about their faults or failures.

They're at peace with life because they have no pretenses about controlling or dominating everything, but know how to welcome reality as it is, and abandon themselves to God's hands.

This is the sort of peace that we see continually in the life of Our Lady, a consequence of the words she said at the Annunciation: Be it done unto me (Luke 1:38). The sky is the limit. Ask whatever you want.

We can ask the Queen of Peace that she might help that peace remain in our hearts now and always, and to help us spread that out very much to those around us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

NJF