Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. St. Paul always offers us a bold challenge!
            To live in peace. It begins with your family. It is sad that many of our families are experiencing significant tension and stress. Many husbands and wives do not spend the time with each other that is necessary to create and sustain the affective bonds of love that are what make a marriage strong and enduring. Economic necessities require that one or both spouses work long hours outside the home and when the spouses are together they are often too tired to focus on their affective needs. In addition, their children demand much of them and as they give them the time that they need, it is less time that they have for themselves. As tensions grow between spouses, it increases the overall tension within the household which necessarily impacts how the spouses relate to their children. The end result is a household that is very much not at peace. Every family has to find a way in which they can make quiet time together a part of their weekly reality and spouses must do the same. It is not easy, but if your marriage and your family are the foundation of your lives then you will find the way to do what is both necessary and essential.
            When you live in peace, the God of love and peace will be with you. God is always with you! The problem is that when our lives are not peaceful, when we are stressed, agitated, and disturbed, we cannot perceive God’s presence with us. In our agitation and disquietude, our hearts are not attuned to the presence of God with us and the assurances of God that God is, indeed, with us and will help us persevere in love and peace. As part of the quiet time that every family and every couple have to create in their week, every family and every couple need to pray to God. They need to make a quiet space for God so that they can experience God’s presence with them, God’s deep love for them, and God’s deep desire to sustain them through all of life’s challenges.
            The challenge of St. Paul is one that we should hear and embrace!                                                                                                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Fr. Mark Hallinan, S.J