Joke: The doctor says to a lady, “Your husband needs rest and peace. Here are some sleeping pills.” The wife asks the doctor, “When must I give them to him?” The doctor says, “They are for you...”

Is this the kind of Peace that the Lord intended when he created the universe and all within it? All today’s readings focus on the two words spoken by the Lord Jesus: Peace and Division that Saint Luke beautifully describes in today’s Gospel.

Peace is an important theme throughout the Gospel of Luke. However, in today’s Gospel, he repeats what the Lord Jesus taught his disciples and his followers saying, “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” We might believe that the Lord comes to bring division rather than peace; therefore, we just have to suffer or deal with it when there is division in our family, in our community, or this world. From the beginning, when God created this universe and all that it contains, including our human beings, He created everything good. His intention and his purpose are to bring everything well into existence. In His image and likeness, He created us, male and female with a free will to choose to follow what he commanded us or not. Created in his image and likeness, God didn’t bring division, suffering, war, or anything in that nature upon us right from the beginning of the creation, rather he gave us free will, happiness, and peace to joyfully live in that garden. It is that free will that Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and we brought division upon ourselves, isolated ourselves away from God, and distanced ourselves from being good that God intended when he created us. Just as Adam disobeyed God being isolated away from God and recognized that the shame of being naked with them didn’t feel shame before they ate the forbidden fruit, Jesus Christ, by his obedience to God, restored that brokenness and repaired that division with God by Grace. There is an American saying, “There is nothing free in America.” It is truly so with God that there is a cost to achieve true peace, the state of grace, the heaven. This cost might be a division within a family. This is why the next two chapters of Luke’s Gospel repeat the words of Jesus saying, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” He does not ask us to hate one another, especially our loved ones, but rather, it requires a cost in following the Lord Jesus and in acquiring His peace by placing him above all things, even our loved ones.

The cost of discipleship describes in today’s first reading, taken from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, that one might have to shed his or her life to testify for the truth when the princes come to report to the King saying, “Jeremiah ought to be put to death; he is demoralizing the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such things to them; he is not interested in the welfare of our people, but in their ruin.” The cost of being discipleship might require us to shed our own life. King Zedekiah answered the princes saying, “He is in your power; for the king could do nothing with them.” This is very true with us when we are allowed ourselves to let sins allure us and attract us with all the pleasures and the sweetness that this earthly life can offer that we just have to give up. Just as the king is so attractive to the power that he just has to agree with these princes rather than stand for the truth that Jeremiah calling people back to fidelity, we, in our weakness and limitation, sometimes give in to what is so attractive to us, to make us so comfortable that might block our vision to see, our ability to hear, it might even numb our heart to turn away from sins and the allurements of this earthly life. This is very true with us when we get used to the sins—the sins of the flesh; the sins of sacking up without married in the Church; the sins of lying and stealing, of gossiping and hurting others, and many other sins that somehow so attached to us that we just have to give in when it arises. The question is how is it to help us become Jesus’ disciples and acquire his peace rather than division?

Saint Paul offers us the solution describes in today’s second reading saying, “Let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader, and perfecter of faith.” Fixing our eyes on the Lord Jesus gives us strength in following him, and fixing our eyes on him gives us courage in persevering whatever is so difficult and so attached to us in following Him and acquiring his peace. Saint Paul also invites us to examine ourselves, saying, “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.” Saint Paul encourages us to examine ourselves that in our moments of temptation, have we had the courage to go against temptation that we might shed blood just as the Lord Jesus himself experienced in the garden of Gethsemane? In the garden of Gethsemane, he experiences the division within himself, the temptations that the devil presents to him after 40 days of fasting torn him b/w obedience to the Father’s will or to go against His Father’s will that he has to call on His Father, “Why have you forsaken me?” Perhaps, in our temptations, have we experienced the division that might trouble us to make a decision? At that moment, have we tried to fix our eyes on the Lord Jesus, or have we allowed the allurements and the pleasures of this earthly life to cover our eyes to look upon the Lord Jesus? Even though, sometimes, we just give into temptation rather than go against it b/c of its nature of pleasure and comfort that’s attractive to our human nature, do we remember to come back to the Lord, to seek forgiveness, and to try to fix our eyes on the Lord Jesus again? Among the cost of discipleship, acquiring peace, and division, which one do we see ourselves are more attractive to? How can we eliminate division to follow the Lord and acquire his peace? The decision is yours.