Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today's Gospel, our Lord says in plain English, “In the world you will have trouble.” So we know this ahead of time, right? I think it can happen that Christians, and maybe especially Christians here in America, kind of expect to have a trouble-free life and to live just a happy and peaceful life. And we should thank God if that happens to be the case, but most likely it’s not going to be the case. In the world you will have trouble. And why is that? Well, because we live in a fallen world, a world in which suffering is everywhere and inescapable. A fallen world, fallen human beings, and also a world that can be hostile to the Gospel.
You know, I think about what’s going on in the Church in Washington State right now, where they’ve passed a law that priests have to violate the seal of confession or suffer jail time. I think it’s up to a year in jail and some fines and things like that. And the bishops have told their priests that they have to go to jail instead of violating the seal of confession because we must obey God rather than men. And I bet when those priests entered seminary and perhaps even on the day of their ordination, they didn’t have anything like that in mind. And so this is what our Lord is talking about. We don’t know what is coming down the pike, but He says, take courage. I have conquered the world.
And our Lord is victorious in His resurrection. He actually has the last word on all of these things, on suffering and death. Jesus in His resurrection, and we can say in His ascension, has the last and final say. “I have told you this so that you might have peace in Me.” And so it is in Christ, faith in Christ, that we can find peace. While we will have trouble in the world, we can have peace in Him. This is a peace that the world cannot give.
A worldly peace is kind of exactly what I described at the beginning of the homily, in which it’s an exterior peace where perhaps you’re enjoying good health and maybe you’ve got your favorite job and a place to live and these type of things. Let me tell you, there are plenty of people that have all those things and don’t have interior peace. That’s the peace of the world. The peace of Christ, you can be in jail and suffering greatly and still enjoy peace in Christ. How do we know this? Because we have testimonies, there are people who have real practical experience in that.
I remember hearing the testimony, I think it was the prisoners, Christian prisoners in Romania, who years after they were released from prison, actually looked back with nostalgia because they said in the midst of those horrible conditions, they actually never experienced the presence of God in such a way. They had so much peace and even joy in the midst of those conditions because Jesus, by His resurrection, has the last word. 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.