A few weeks back we watched Kung-Fu Panda 2. (Warning: this post contains a spoiler.) I thought it was going to be one of those cheesy, kid-movie remakes that repeat the same plot until parents stop buying the movies, but it was a surprise with Po maturing and it stills stays super-funny. Po has to confront the fact that Mr. Ping s not his father but he was abandoned as a baby Panda. He does this all and goes on the find inner peace. Inner peace becomes just want he needs to defeat the evil Lord who had killed his parents.
After the movie, we were playing soccer and we started joking about it: a brother would make a half circle with his foot then do some cheesy kung-fu and quip “inner peace.” Or when a brother scored a killer goal, someone would banter about how much inner peace he had. One brother even joked “peace on.”
In a way our lives are like Po’s – we all have our difficulties we need to overcome. We however get our inner peace from Christ not from a harmony of forces. Our peace comes from the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit not from simple acceptance of the past.
In the end, Po achieves this final peace; originally you think that it is just a super power he has achieved. Since Christ gives us much more peace than a simple alignment of forces, how much more super-power we ought to have.
All we want to do for Christ needs to come from the inner peace of having him in our heart. If we have that peace, we will have the strength to change this world. As Luis M. Martinez said, “the apostolic like is the overflow of the contemplative life into the active life.”
