The law of love

Bishop Scott Bullock
Sixth Sunday of Easter 
May 25, 2025

There is vivid terror in Erika’s eyes when she talks about her traumatic experience in Ukraine. She speaks of the bombing that started when she was at home with her friends. Since that time, she recounts, it’s been a nightmare. “We spent five days in the bombing shelter. I thought it would never end. I don’t want to go back. In a few hours, I will take the bus to the Netherlands. The Netherlands is a safe haven,” she says, while struggling to manage her emotions and feelings. 

Alina, Erika’s mother, is optimistic that very soon Ukrainians will be able to return home to their nation. Erika then adds, “We are a strong nation. We will win this war. Peace is very close. I will visit the Netherlands and very soon I will return to my beloved Ukraine.”

Erika is a woman whose soul is divided. She does not want to go back to her dangerous homeland, where she’s experienced a trauma. At the same time, she dreams, she hopes for the day when she will return, when war, vanquished, gives way to peace after her visit, temporarily to a Dutch safe haven. She is divided in her soul. She’s not at peace. 

The experience of Erika speaks to the very nature of what it means to be at peace. At real peace.  Jesus, the peace of God, promises us this truth: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I give it.”  

The Biblical word for this peace is eiréné (εἰρήνη), literally meaning “joined together into a whole,” when we are no longer divided or fragmented. This being-made-whole, Jesus promises, comes when we hear and listen to his word. When his Father and Son, who are love, come and dwell in us. This indwelling of love being what we have come to know as the Holy Spirit. For when the spirit of love comes to dwell fully in us, and then alone, we’re no longer divided in ourselves. Instead, so fulfilling, so overflowing is that love that we become single-minded in hearing the Word of God that says, “Love one another as I love you.”  

It will be in this overflowing, loving others, that peace will finally come to our souls and to the world. Love alone overcomes the divisions within and between us, and only the perfect love of God can bring perfect peace.

So, Erika — and, with her, her whole fragmented, war-torn nation — is not yet at peace. But she and her nation are not the only ones, right? Neither are we at peace. For we’re not at peace because the peace the only Jesus can give, does not yet fully, definitively reign in our divided souls.  

This was made clear that our new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, who was keenly aware of a lack of peace in our world — among the nations and in the midst of most human hearts, when he opened his papacy with these words, the same words that Jesus spoke when he rose from the dead. The pope said, “La pace sia con tutti voi!” Peace be with you. 

In these words of Jesus, the pope is inviting us to come to the Lord, who alone can put the pieces of our lives together into a peace that only he can grant. And yet we still seek to quell our divided hearts with other things that seem to satisfy that longing for peace, but only fragments of peace that seem attainable in this world. Things like food, or wealth, and or even relationships. Rather, it’s only when we seek Him, love Him, and serve Him above all. Each time we see him in the face of our sisters and brothers then we will no longer be divided in our souls. Then we will no longer be longing for something else, that will finally make us free, finally give us peace. 

For peace must come from beyond our finite, fragile selves and beyond the finite things of this world. For the peace that Jesus offers is the peace of a soul no longer divided. It’s the peace of the soul completely immersed in His Love and ready to fulfill the needs of others. 

We’ve looked elsewhere to find peace, haven’t we, besides the Prince of Peace. Let’s come now to peace itself. Let’s receive peace, and let’s dispense peace. And let us do so with single-minded hearts and souls, overflowing with divine love. The sure and single fount of the peace for our souls and the world that only Jesus can give.