The Peace and Blessing of God
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and remain with you always. Amen.
Book of Common Prayer, p.339
These familiar words, heard at the end of every Holy Eucharist, remind us each week we come away from His Altar filled by the “peace of God” and the “blessing of God Almighty.”
The peace God gives us is not what the world expects. By “peace,” the world means absence of conflict, freedom from struggle and exemption from pain. By these standards, to quote Hymn 661 by William Alexander Percy, “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod.” For when Jesus tells His friends, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you,” He knows in a few hours He will hang on a cross and His friends will be scattered in terror. Clearly, the peace Christ gives is not the peace of temporal tranquility and the absence of strife.
The peace of God given in the Eucharist is essentially peace with God. It is reconciliation, harmony and atonement (at-one-ment) with Him. Once, we were enemies of God because of our sin. Then we said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you and am no more worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.” (Luke 15:19) And God pardoned us and restored us to favor as His beloved children. So long as we know God knows and loves us, we have a peace which indeed passes all understanding—that peace which is our invincible assurance that “God is our refuge, from one generation to another.” (Psalm 90:1)
Then there is God’s Blessing. Unfortunately, over time, the verb “to bless” has become a rather tame word of conventional piety, but originally the word meant something far more severe. The word “bless” comes from the Old English word “bloedsian,” which means “to bind with blood.” In ancient times, men who wanted to make a binding agreement would seal their covenant with their own blood. It is in this sense we are to understand the Blessing God gives us in the Eucharist. Christ’s blood represents His life given for us and mystically given to us when we receive the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. Thus, He blesses us. However, it is a two-way exchange, for in this Holy Sacrifice we have offered “our selves, our souls and bodies,”—our blood, our life—“to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice” to God, and He has received us and entered into a blood covenant with us.
The unspeakable blessing is this: not only do we have peace with God, thanks to the free gift of His pardoning love, but we also have God Himself in us, to be our Strength, our Joy and our Life until He calls us to the Church Triumphant above.
