P: “Lord Jesus Christ, who said to your Apostles, Peace I leave you, my peace I give you, look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will. Who live and reign for ever and ever”.
All: Amen.
Everything is now prepared on this heavenly mountain (Gen 22: 14) of the altar, as happened from the arduous work of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection (Lk 14: 16-17).
It is peace that this work of Christ has prepared for us. Peace is the summit of every soul’s aspirations. It is the height of heaven, the essence of the Holy Spirit, and here at the Eucharistic banquet of the altar, it cannot get any better.
We see within this heavenly banquette a plenitude of peace, in good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over; and here, this gift of peace, more than any dependence upon our moralistic measure (Lk 6: 38), is given as a reliance of an unfailing hope, according to the root of an ecclesiastical faith derived from Peter’s confession as we say:
‘Look not upon our sins, but upon the faith of your Church…’
The peace to be derived from the altar is like non-other. It is His heavenly peace, devoid of the materialism that the world offers (Jn 14: 27). Keep your gaze on Christ on the altar. Do not blink or you'll miss this peace!
It is right that there be limited distractions, even though, the essence of benefiting from this vertical dimension of the altar is to share it around the communal horizontal dimension across the pew (1 Jn 4: 20) because we hear:
‘Let us offer each other the sign of peace’
But during this sharing of peace, many end up losing their peace. Unlike the Wise Virgins, we give out the oil of our salvation (Mt 25: 9), we get distracted, we return handshakes with humour and we forget the solemnity of the altar.
360 degrees we turn, across the aisle we move, up and down the pews we go, chit chat we make, and we get caught up, unprepared and distracted, as the ‘Agnus Dei’ follows.
If we happen to have missed the peace, O Lord, may we not miss the mercy that follows…
