Do not let your hearts be troubled.
In today’s gospel Jesus states: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Last time I looked out on the world I noted that covid keeps on coming back like a fruitcake at Christmas, the crisis in Ukraine has the potential of starting World War III and after a semester of serious admonition, my students are still ending sentences with prepositions. The world is a mess and trouble is not only just around the corner it seems to have sat down for breakfast and plans on staying for the rest of the day. When Jesus said to his disciples, “do not let your hearts be troubled,” perhaps some of them may have thought that being dead for a few days may have affected his cognitive abilities. Trouble then, trouble now and no end in sight. As Hobbes so pithily stated, especially if you were a French peasant, life was nasty, brutish, and short. A few years later, some modern philosophers picked up on Hobbes’ general outlook on the human condition. Schopenhauer as one example, perceived humanity has having rather bleak prospects and then you died. The resurrection of Christ places before humanity a fundamental world view. Either God is over creation and when we cooperate with God’s plan there will be an ultimate resolution to what we understand as trouble, or, the world is rather desperate and it only get’s worse. For those of us of tepid faith, we can be warmed by the examples of the great saints who plowed through trouble with resolve and courage. I am reminded of the courage of Mother Teresa who admonished her sisters to face life with a smile since God is at work when we let him. And this is coming from a woman who at the end of her life only had about 6 teeth left. That’s courage in the face of trouble