We all want to be at peace, and we all yearn to come home after busy (and especially stressful) days. How often have we heard a small child lament from the backseat of a car, “I want to go home!”?

But what if we could have peace and home wherever we go, that could transcend our activities, places and time, no matter where we are? Well that is exactly what God wants to give us.

True peace conquers

Right before He went to the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus gave His disciples a final warning against false peace, and that only He could provide the peace that would sustain them during His crucifixion and death.

“Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid” (John 14:27).

And later, when Jesus showed Himself for the first time to His disciples after dying on the cross, He greeted them with “Shalom”, meaning, “Peace be with you.”

This was no arbitrary phrase. He didn’t hold up the two-fingered 1960’s “peace sign” to encourage their tolerance and political pacifism. He was conveying to them that His peace still stands–that He conquered the evil that was brought onto Him–that He conquers no matter what!

So how can we conquer our own fears and struggles with the peace of Jesus Christ?

Gathered or scattered?

Jesus made it clear to His disciples that this peace is a supernatural gift from God, one we cannot manufacture on our own.

Why? Because Jesus Christ was prophesied as the one and only Prince of Peace.

He said, “Whoever does not gather with me, scatters” (Mt 12:30).

When we stop to consider this statement, it brings tremendous clarity when we apply it to our world today.

Like a hen gathering her chicks, when we turn our backs on Jesus, we are scattered by the “wolves”. We see individuals, families, communities, entire nations and regions of the world either divided or at war (including our nation) simply because they have rejected Jesus Christ.

Yet Jesus offers us a tremendous promise that despite all the turmoil, if we make up for what is lacking in the world by offering God our daily joys, pains, and sins, He will make up for what is lacking in us, and give us peace.

Possessing God

When we come to Jesus in prayer, Holy Mass, and the Sacraments, He deigns to makes us His home.

The very fact that He can do this is fitting because He became one of us (in every way but sin). And Since He is also one of the Holy Trinity in the Godhead, Jesus can make His home in anyone, everywhere, at the same time.

Through the Holy Eucharist (and His precious Blood), Jesus can make His “home” in us, but only if we are free from mortal sin and we invite Him into our “homes”–that is to say, our souls.

Demonic possession

Interestingly, the difference between this and demonic possession is when God makes us His “home”, we possess Him who gives Himself to us (as much as we are able), which increases our freedom and capacity to love.

With the demonic it is completely inverted or opposite:

The demon possess us, lessening our freedom and capacity to love.

It’s easy to remember this because the devil seeks to keep the truth hidden (the word “occult” means “hidden”), and the Lord seeks to reveal and make the truth known. (The word “revelation” means “to reveal”.)

That’s why Jesus said whatever is done in secret or under the cover of darkness will be “proclaimed from the housetops” for all to see on the Day of Reckoning when the entire world is publicly judged by God (Luke 12:3).

That means, we will see our own sins and how they affected others, and the sins of others in a public way (CCC 1038-1040). Yikes. The awesome thing about this is, God is perfectly just; His providential plan on earth will also be fully revealed to us at the end of time.

Bug spray

Once we accept that God wants to provide us with an inner rest that the world cannot give, we must make a daily commitment to prayer (resting in God).

Though we may not always feel His divine Presence, since He is everywhere, God is always with us in a mysterious way. It is only when we reject Him (through mortal sin) that He cannot make His home in us because, through our own choices, we have “evicted” Him from our souls.

The same principle can be applied to places of employment, schools, hospitals, and even places of worship. If God has been explicitly evicted, these places (and the people in them) will be left vulnerable to Satanic attack through division, demonic oppression, anxiety and tension. Have you experienced uneasiness in some places or around certain people?

That could be the Holy Spirit cluing you in, prompting you to pray for those particular people or places, and for your own spiritual protection as well. So don’t ignore it!

Think of God’s loving protection as going into the woods with bug spray. (I know, it’s an imperfect analogy.) Okay, so let’s say you forget your bug spray. Unprotected, the insects descend and you’re covered in parasites, welts and papules.

It’s the same concept with demonic attacks: Like exposed yummy-looking skin attracting a cloud of mosquitos on an unsuspecting and un-sprayed hiker, when we reject God, we leave ourselves and our families vulnerable to Satan.

So we persevere! We never stop asking God to make His home in us, and we keeping confessing any mortal sins until God calls us home.

Heaven is our home

That being said, because heaven is our true home, we will never possess complete and total peace here.

How do we know this? Because Jesus came down from heaven. God, the angels and the saints reside in heaven. So we know our peace comes from heaven.

This world is but a faint reflection of the renewal of the world to come; and at the end of time it will be destroyed in fire, and the two will be made one, ushering in the final union of heaven and earth at the great wedding feast of the Lamb.

Christians must strive to live in such a way that is marked by a longing for the love of God and the fulfillment of a permanent peace in heaven.

Every morning, do we prepare as best we can to meet Our Lord Jesus? And every evening, do we look up at the sunset with a longing that gives way to a whisper echoing the child in the back seat of the car, sighing, “I want to go home”?

“And he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).