5th Sunday of Eastertide Year B 2021

 

 5^th. Sunday of Eastertide (B)

(Acts of the Apostles 9:26-31; 1^st. Letter of St. John 3:18-24; Gospel of St. John 15: 4a 5b.

 

 

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine grower.  Remain in Me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me.

 

Our modern post-Christian society and world still remembers Jesus with admiration, but not for His example in so far as it is an example to be followed:

           

I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.    (John 13:15)

 

Our world wants freedom of choice, freedom to be and become what each and every one of them may want to become.   They claim that they alone know the truth about themselves.

 

People today remember many of the words of Christ, but no longer accept the traditional Catholic and Christian understanding of those words Jesus originally committed to His Apostles and which the Holy Spirit of Jesus would recall to their memories for their proclamation of Jesus’ saving truth to the world.

 

Let us just glance at some of the promises Jesus made, first of all the greatest of all:

 

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of My hand.   (John 10:28)

 

That promise would be wonderful if it were true, but modern ‘scientifically inclined’ former church-goers, or just non-believers, are not disposed by their frequent watching of star-wars and inter-galactic conflicts to believe any such tales of ‘eternal life’!

 

Again, Jesus made a once very popular promise (John 14:27):

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.

 

But once again, in our wealthy west, society itself does not want peace so much as excitement for the young, because such excitement -- seeking pleasure -- generates much money, and that bestows much power on those secret few who most want it.

And in the meanwhile, western governments are with pretended innocence deliberately seeking to change society according to idealistic plans that do not necessarily take into serious account the wishes of their people; and such ignored and disregarded desires can easily generate resistance against imposed cultures.  The hatred of persons, ‘racism’, so easily decried, is by no means always truly involved.  Nazi-ism was the result of many years deliberate, national, cultural development.

 

Ultimately, we come to the most treasured of Jesus’ promised gifts:

 

I gave them Your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. (John 17:14)

 

And most spiritual of all:

 

I have given them the glory You gave Me, so that they may be one, as We are One (John 17:22).

 

That ‘glory’ is the Most Holy Spirit of God, the Bond of Love between Father and Son, the bond of Christian Love and Obedience. 

 

Dear People of God, that is why Jesus and His Christian Faith and Catholic Church are now rejected because they embody, proclaim, and calmly demand loving obedience, humble gratitude, and great, personal and patient, expectations of God’s infinite and eternal Goodness!!