peace be with you
Last night I went to 5:00 mass at a church near my house, one I had never been to before. One of the many things I like about the Catholic church is that each mass is pretty much the same. The readings change each Sunday, the songs may get rotated in and out, and the sermons obviously change, but most of the mass is the same every week. And each time you can get something new out of it. I’ll come back to that in just a minute.
The mass generally contains two parts: the Liturgy of the Word, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which is a time of preparation to receive Christ through the Eucharist, we pray the Lord’s Prayer, and then after that we share a sign of peace. The priest says “peace be with you” to us, to which we reply, “and also with you,” and then the priest invites us to share with one another “a sign of peace.” At this time people hug and kiss loved ones, tell them “peace be with you” and then usually turn to those sitting nearby and shake hands and say peace be with you.
Now here’s what struck me last night as I shook hands with strangers and offered them a sign of peace: It’s a rare moment. In Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell talks about these moments where the ground is holy, where God is so evidently present. And it struck me how rare the moment is in our lives when we reach out to people we’ve never met and may never see again. There’s no agenda, nothing we need from them. We just want them to have peace. No idea who they are. No idea what they’re going through. We just reach out… peace be with you… and smile.
I was driving home from school on Friday around 10am. I had nowhere important to be for several hours, so I was calm and enjoying listening to a little music and rolling down the windows to let the great weather in. A car came up in the next lane, and its driver was clearly in a hurry and frustrated. He was leaning forward a little, face tensed up, knuckles white from clenching the steering wheel. I could almost feel the heat coming off his red face as I watched him yell at nobody in particular from the “privacy” of his car. Something happens to us when we get behind the wheel; we extend our personal space to the entire lane, and we extend our inner monologue to the entire inside of our car. And I could see his inner monologue spilling violently out of his entire being from the next lane over. The rage was palpable.
He couldn’t see how temporary and unnecessary his anger was. From the outside, it looked ridiculous to get so mad over a little traffic, but in the moment, in the throes of a temper tantrum, there is nothing but consuming hate. Complete strangers. He didn’t know who they were, and he didn’t know what they were going through. He just wanted bad things to happen to them.
As I shook hands with strangers on Saturday and offered them a sign of peace, I thought of the man in the black Chevy, and I wondered what the odds were that he would be in that same church. I wish I could have seen him again. I wish I could have reached out to him, shook his hand, and said peace be with you.
May mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance.
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