April 12, 2026: Remember the Background
Remember the Background
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find peace these days? I mean, you sit down, maybe with your morning coffee, thinking, “Ah, finally, a quiet moment.” And then—just one quick look at your phone, or you turn on the TV and suddenly it’s breaking news, alerts, headlines, updates… and whatever peace you had just slips away.
And notice “Breaking news” is always bad news, we never have “Breaking good news.” They say in reporting, “If it bleeds, it leads” Media keeps us locked into the bad news occurring all over the world and it keeps it right in front of us—what we might call the foreground of life. Hence our world become fast, loud, always changing and full of bad news.
And if that’s where we live—only in the foreground—then the concept of peace will always feel out of reach. But think about the Gospel we just heard. It offers something different. Now the first section occurs on Easter, the day Jesus rose. The apostles are in the upper room. The doors are locked. They are afraid. Their whole world has fallen apart. Their leader has been killed. And then he simply shows us.
He doesn’t explain everything. He doesn’t fix the political situation. He doesn’t give them a five-step plan. He simply stands in their midst and his first words are “Peace be with you.” Which he repeats.
What they needed wasn’t a change in the foreground. They needed to be reconnected to the background. You see, the foreground is everything that changes—news, stress, work, health, uncertainty. It’s real, and it matters. But it’s not where peace comes from.
Peace comes from the background—like a backbone, steady and unchanging. For Catholics, it is faith in a loving God and in Jesus Christ, rooted in Scripture and expressed in the Creed. While the foreground of life is always changing, this foundation remains firm. And when we stay rooted in it, we can fully engage the world without losing our peace.
That’s why the Church, in her wisdom, gives us this rhythm of coming back every Sunday. It’s like God is saying: “Step away from the noise. Don’t stay glued to your phone or have the TV constantly on. Come back to what is real. Come back to Me.” St. Benedict, from the year 500, told his monks: stop your work, again and again, and return to prayer—the “Work of God.” Not because the work was bad, but because it wasn’t what mattered most. And the same is true for us.
Perhaps, we’re a little like Thomas in the second section of the Gospel. We say, “Lord, I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ll have peace when things calm down. I’ll trust when I have proof.” And Jesus, in His divine mercy, doesn’t reject Thomas. He invites him closer. “Touch my wounds. Put your finger here… see my hands.”
In other words: Come back to Me. Come back to what is real. Come back to the backbone of your faith. And Thomas makes that beautiful profession of faith: “My Lord and my God.” That’s the moment he shifts—from the foreground to the background.
And that’s the invitation for all of us today. Because if we only live in the foreground, we will always be anxious. There will always be something new, some “breaking news,” something out of our control. But if remember our background, our backbone, which is grounded in Christ—we can have peace. Not because life is perfect. But because Christ’s Divine Mercy is. But because Christ’s love is.
