Peace Be With You

Happy Easter season, all! I didn’t get this posted in time for Divine Mercy Sunday, when the Sunday Gospel was punctuated three times by Jesus’ greeting of “Peace be with you.” But I hope you will still find it to be a meaningful Easter reflection. I think I understand these words better now than when I wrote them almost a year go for Give Us This Day. A gritty and unshakable peace is exhaled from a wounded body, not an unblemished one.

Peace Be with You

Just minutes after his election to the papacy on May 8, 2025, Pope Leo XIV stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and spoke these words to the watching world: “Peace be with you.” He chose these words with great care. They were, as he explained, the first words of the risen Christ to his disciples— words Pope Leo described as “disarming” and “humble” and, most importantly, “from God, who loves all of us.”

In Sunday’s Gospel the risen Jesus utters this profound greeting three times: “Peace be with you.” Repetition in Scrip­ture signals that something significant is happening. In this case, it signals that “peace” is the signature greeting of resurrection.

“Peace” in Scripture (shalom in Hebrew; eirene in Greek) is a state of being. It is a way of existing in the world that allows us to be whole, unshaken—even thriving—amid change, disruption, and struggle. Earlier in John’s Gospel Jesus de­scribes this peace as his own (“my peace”) and as a gift (“I give to you”). This gift far surpasses anything the world can offer (“Not as the world gives do I give it to you,” John 14:27).

The risen Christ imparts this peace—three times—to his disciples as they hide in a locked room out of fear. Why are they so afraid? They are afraid that what has happened to Jesus will happen to them: humiliation, torture, death. They might seem a bit cowardly to us, two thousand years later, but at the time their behavior was entirely natural. Jesus was a victim of horrific violence. Fear had overcome them.

Interestingly, Jesus’ spoken word of peace is immediately followed by the showing of his wounds. This is the case both in his initial visit and then again when he returns for Thomas. The showing of the wounds serves as much more than proof that this Risen One is Jesus. The wounds serve as clear signs of why peace is Jesus’ gift to give: He has overcome the world with a resounding victory that astounds the mind and seizes the heart. But victory has been won the hard way, with wounds that are eternal. Resurrection began as a struggle. It means nothing if it is disconnected from the death from which it emerged.

If resurrection has this kind of grit and intensity, then so does the peace that flows from it. Far from sitting on the sur­face of our lives providing fleeting experiences of calm, this peace—the one exhaled by the risen Christ from deep within his scarred and glorified body—takes hold of us. It is the Spirit at work in us, the presence of Jesus remaining with us. The purpose of this peace is not to make us feel tranquil, but to enliven us completely. Our own wounds become vehicles of resurrection. Our fear is transformed into mission.

The broken and healed body of Resurrection has breathed on us. We have received the peace that the world cannot give. And so we are sent: sent out to utter this humble and disarm­ing greeting of resurrection and life to all who will listen, for as long as we draw breath: “Peace be with you.”

Amy Ekeh, from the April 2026 issue of Give Us This Day, www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2026). Used with permission.

Holy Week: Our Salvation Narrative

I don’t know about you, but my Lent went by so quickly! Thank God for Holy Week—a time to slow down and enter into the agony and the wonder of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The following article was originally published in this month’s GIA Quarterly and is republished here with permission. I hope it may be helpful in reflecting on the Gospel texts that tell the story of our salvation.

Holy Week: Our Salvation Narrative

It’s been said that we have four Gospels because one would not be enough to tell the story of Jesus Christ. And indeed, each of the Gospels tells the story of Jesus in its own unique way. This variety gives us a fuller, more textured portrait of Jesus.

But in the stories of Jesus’ passion and death, the four Gospels find great harmony. Even the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the Gospel of John—usually quite different in tone and content—agree on significant details of Jesus’ suffering and death.

Why might this be? It’s clear that of all the stories told and retold about Jesus—stories that circulated for decades before they were written or woven into Gospel accounts—the stories of Jesus’ passion and death were especially revered. They were told often. They were preserved with great care. Their details were cherished like precious family heirlooms or holy relics. They were among the church’s most sacred truths.

As we enter into Holy Week, we immerse ourselves in these essential stories once again—hearing, breathing, living them as one salvation narrative.

Palm Sunday

All four Gospels share the high drama of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the back of a colt or donkey, accompanied by the cries and shouts of the people: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” This moment is understood as the fulfillment of a prophecy: “Your king comes to you” (e.g., Matt 21:5; cf Zech 9:9).

Of course, the excitement of the people as Jesus enters Jerusalem serves as an illuminating backdrop to the week’s unfolding events. The king enters the city to the waving of branches and the laying down of cloaks. But soon the people will scatter in confusion and division, and the king will be abandoned, mocked, and murdered. 

This kind of contrast is appropriate to a salvation narrative. The people are genuine in both their praise and their abandonment of Jesus—and so it continues with us. The high drama of Palm Sunday reminds us why we need a savior.

Holy Thursday

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John agree that Jesus shared a final meal with his disciples the night before his death. But here we have a fascinating divergence between the Synoptics and John. While the Synoptic Gospels give us details about a Passover meal, characterized by Jesus as an intimate meal to be shared in his memory, John’s Gospel says very little about the supper itself. Instead, John focuses on another powerful moment: the washing of feet. “He rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist” (13:4).

The wonderful thing about this apparent divergence is the actual convergence of the stories. Eucharist and footwashing are intersecting rituals at the heart of our salvation narrative—both are events, acts, declarations of total love and self-gift: “This is my body, which will be given for you” (Luke 22:19) and “You ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow” (John 13:14-15). Jesus’ life has become pure gift—in both living and dying, it is for the sake of the other.

Every word of Holy Thursday’s narrative—and every sign of its liturgy—is eucharistic, whether of bread and wine, or towel and basin.

Good Friday

All four Gospels agree that Jesus was arrested at the Mount of Olives, tried before the high priest, denied by Simon Peter, mocked and tortured by soldiers, handed over by Pilate, crucified between two criminals at a place called Golgotha, and offered vinegar or wine in his final moments. These traditions are strikingly consistent.

Equally striking—and deeply revealing about the full reality of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—is the variety among the Gospels regarding Jesus’ final words. Here again we are reminded that four Gospels give us a fuller, richer narrative. Each utterance of Jesus sheds light on how he lived and died, and how he saved.

In Matthew and Mark, Jesus cries out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34). Jesus, exhausted, uses his last bit of energy to shout to God his feeling of total abandonment, relying on a psalm he knew by heart. Yes, Psalm 22 ends on a victorious note, but it is not that note that Jesus sounds. God will triumph, but this is a moment of despair—and a moment of remarkable familiarity, for we see that our savior is every bit like us. He is human and in pain.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ final words again rely on a beloved psalm. Jesus cries out: “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit” (Ps 31:6), and then he “breathes his last” (Luke 23:46). Here we have a final, total declaration of trust in the Father. Rather than a feeling of abandonment, it is self-abandonment that is intoned in this cry—a giving-over-by-choice, an intentional word of surrender.

And finally, in John, a dying man boldly proclaims his own role in the transformation of all that is, saying only: “It is finished” (19:30). Earlier in the same Gospel Jesus had declared: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down on my own” (10:18). And now he has done this great thing, and it is finished.

We may naturally ask which of these utterances really were Jesus’ last words. And of course it is quite possible that he said all of these things on the cross. The witness of the evangelists is the witness of the early church that all of these statements are true, and all shed brilliant light on the person of Jesus and the nature of his death. The pain and abandonment, trust and surrender, power and agency of Jesus—all were and are a part of the narrative of salvation.

Easter

Our salvation narrative leads in one direction and to one place: an empty tomb on Easter morning. And again, all four Gospels agree on this emptiness, witnessed first by women.

Accounts of encounters with the risen Jesus come in all the Gospels, but the empty tomb is the first and fundamental sign of resurrection. We long to see the Risen One for ourselves, with our own eyes—to reach out and touch him, like Mary Magdalene, with our own hands. And we will. But for now, no matter which Gospel we read, we can peer into the emptiness of this burial place and stand in awe of what is not there. For what is missing is death.

This is where our salvation narrative brings us—biblically, liturgically, and communally. For in all of its sameness and all of its differences, fullness of life was the story it told all along.

The women approach the tomb at daybreak. “Three Marys” by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1910).

A Sunset Meditation (and Lenten Opportunities in March and April)

The meditation below is the first reflection in my new book Stretch Out Your Hand: Reflections on the Healing Ministry of Jesus. Unpacking Luke 4:40, a verse about Jesus healing at sunset, it reminds us that every beautiful sunset can be a sign of the deep compassion of our God.

See below for my upcoming Lenten programs in Milford, Hamden, and Hartford, CT, in March and April. Blessings!

AT SUNSET

As the sun was setting, all those caring for any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them (Luke 4:40).

A beautiful scene in a single verse, Luke’s image of Jesus healing at sunset in Capernaum takes our breath away. To have been there! But there is so much we can imagine.

First, the sick, those with “various kinds of diseases.” For many of them, travel was hard. Some were in pain. Some were exhausted. But all of them were hoping.

Second, the loved ones of the sick, those who “brought them to him.” If you have ever watched someone suffer, you know the stress and strain, the worry they carried with them. And you know the hope with which they came. Who knows how many miles they walked with their sick, to bring them to the healer from Nazareth?

Third, the sheer numbers! In Mark’s version of this scene, he remarks that “the whole city was gathered around the door” of the house where Jesus was (1:33). The whole city? The desire for healing is strong.

Finally, Jesus. One doesn’t suppose that Jesus had been sitting idle all day. So he must have been tired. But he didn’t turn away; he didn’t stop. No, one by one he touched “each of them.” We can only imagine the compassion that served as counterpoint to the hope of the people. Compassion that came from a well so deep that it gave no thought on this night to the numbers awaiting him in the next town—and the next, and the next. Compassion that knew no discouragement. Compassion that touched every single one.

It was sunset. The time of day when things begin to quiet down, when we are reminded of the rhythms of night and day, when we recall that an end does come and the light does not last forever. But across the sky are colors, beautiful colors. Across the hearts of the people, hope. Upon the mind of Jesus, love.

He laid his hands on each of them and cured them.

Meditation: The physical, created world can be a place of suffering, but it is also a place of profound compassion. Let the next sunset you see remind you of this scene from Luke’s Gospel. Imagine yourself in the presence of Jesus as day gives way to night.

Prayer: Jesus, as the sun sets on this day, remind me of your tireless compassion, your willingness to touch me, your refusal to ever stop healing.

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LENTEN PROGRAMS

An Evening of Music and Reflection for Lent: “Stretch Out Your Hand”

Monday, March 24, 7:00 PM (Snow Date: March 31)
Saint Ann Church, 501 Naugatuck Ave, Milford, CT

Join me, musician Peter DeMarco, and the Saint Ann Choir for a Lenten Evening of Music and Reflection on the theme of healing and hope. Come hear the incredible Saint Ann Choir, reflect on Jesus’ transformative healing ministry, and enjoy some time for prayer. No registration is required. All are welcome!

Stations of the Cross: “Come to Me, All of You”

Friday, March 28, 7:00 PM
St. Rita Catholic Church, 1620 Whitney Ave., Hamden, CT

Come pray the Stations of the Cross using Come to Me, All of You: Stations of the Cross in the Voice of Christ. Hosted by the parish’s Social Justice Committee. All are welcome!

Evening of Reflection: “Holy Week and Easter: A Time for Healing”

Saint Patrick — St. Anthony Church, 265 Church St., Hartford, CT
Thursday, April 10, 6:30-8:00 pm
Register here

Jesus was a remarkable healer. For much of his public ministry, he was surrounded by human need. Crowds followed him wherever he went, pressing in on him, asking for healing. We too long to encounter this healer from Nazareth. Join me on the cusp of Holy Week as together we reflect on how Jesus is still very much with us, healing and transforming us through his compassionate life, his saving death, and his glorious resurrection. The evening will include reflections, quiet prayer time, and discussion.

The sun on the horizon in Milford, CT. Photo courtesy Ono Ekeh.

NEW BOOK! "Stretch Out Your Hand: Reflections on the Healing Ministry of Jesus"

Hello, all! I’m excited to announce that my new book is now available for preorder from Liturgical Press. This book of reflections on Jesus’ healing ministry was originally conceived as a joint project with my friend Fr. Tom Stegman, SJ, but, as many of you know, Tom died of glioblastoma in 2023. I’ve written this book in his memory, in full knowledge of how much we are all in need of healing—whether of mind, body, or spirit.

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“This beautiful work will bring hope to so many in our broken world who seek the healing touch of Christ. Amy Ekeh has given us a treasure: an insightful, thought-provoking, soul-stirring look at the stories of healing in the Gospels that ends up being a kind of ongoing, heartfelt prayer. I was moved, uplifted, and consoled—and I know many others will be, too. Thank you, Amy Ekeh!”  — Deacon Greg Kandra, journalist and author of A Deacon Prays 
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I hope this book will bring comfort and healing to those who are going through difficult times, those who want to reflect more on healing and Jesus as a healer, and all who bring healing to others, whether as caregivers, medical professionals, chaplains, pastoral ministers, loving family members, or friends.

A big thank you to artist Jack Baumgartner for allowing us to use his beautiful painting of Jesus and Thomas on the book’s front cover.

Blessings!
Amy

Can't Sleep? Try Praying.

So many of us struggle with restless nights. Several years ago I posted a “Prayer When I Can’t Sleep,” which I’m sharing again today, along with a reflection about praying in “the night watches.” These dark and quiet hours are particularly vulnerable times. They can open us to surrender, self-offering—even praise—if we can transform them from empty moments of worry and frustration into vigils of prayer and connection.

From the October issue of Give Us This Day, shared here with permission.

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Holy One, Maker of the Stars,
In the beginning there was only darkness,
And your wind swept across the face of the deep.
Tonight I see this darkness. I hear its silence.
I feel its emptiness. It surrounds me.
In my home all is still except my mind.

Sweep across me, Holy One, whole and entire,
Across every undone thing in me, every unresolved thought,
Every restless rustling of my soul, every ache and pain of my tired body.
Speak with your creative breath into my night,
Speak the light of your presence into every crack and crevice,
So I may have peace and sleep, and wake to the gentle hope of morning.

Praying Through the Night

When the psalmist couldn’t sleep, he prayed.

He prayed in his bed, he prayed on his couch, he prayed in the sanctuary and under the stars. He cried aloud, he wept, he stretched out his hands, groaned, pondered, meditated, and exhorted. He blessed God. He felt God’s hand upon him. He remembered God’s name and proclaimed God’s faithfulness. And according to the psalms, he did all of this “by night,” in “the watches of the night,” or even “all night.” (See, for example, Psalms 6, 63, and 77.)

Most of us have struggled at one time or another with falling or staying asleep. Lying awake at night can feel frus­trating, wasteful, and lonely. But the middle of the night has traditionally been a fruitful, even intentional, time for prayer. In some religious communities, rising in “the watches of the night” to pray is customary.

The nighttime hours are dark and quiet, with fewer distractions than our full and busy days. If we live with others, they are likely asleep. We are not needed. We won’t be inter­rupted. There is nothing we need to accomplish. In the stillness and silence, we can turn our full attention inward, to our hearts, and raise our hands outward, to our God.

The dark of night can feel oppressive, but we can learn to experience it biblically—as the “original darkness” before creation, from which light sprang forth and life overflowed, out of which the relationship between God and human beings emerged. Darkness may feel like a void, but it is the void that gives way to all that lives.

The darkness of our sleepless nights teems with potential. Our wakefulness can become a vigil, our restlessness an invitation, our silence a summons to the Maker of the Stars to speak in us with the same creative breath that swept across the original darkness. In keeping this vigil, our own darkness may be filled with light—the light of Christ that cannot be extinguished.

And so it is that in the watches of the night, we may come to share another experience of the psalmist—faith that in the presence of God who neither slumbers nor sleeps, darkness is not dark at all, for the night shines like the day (Ps 121:4; 139:12).

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Amy Ekeh, from the October 2024 issue of Give Us This Day, www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2024). Used with permission.

Prayer vigils. Photo by Tim Vineyard.