4th.
SUNDAY OF EASTER (C)
(Acts 13:14, 43-52; Revelation 7: 9,
14-17; John 10:27-30)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, today our Easter joy
continues by centering us on Jesus as our Saviour from sin and the Lord
of Life.
In the episode partially recorded in our first reading, Paul
proclaimed Jesus to fellow Jews in Antioch, a major city in the Roman province
of Pisidia, in the following words:
He Whom God raised up did not see
corruption. You must know, my brothers,
that through this Man forgiveness of sins is being proclaimed to you; by this
Jesus everyone is set free from all
those sins from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.
(Acts 13:37-39)
Those Pisidian Jews, however, rejected Paul’s Good News about
Jesus’ ability to save believers from sin and to give them eternal life:
Both Paul and Barnabas spoke out
boldly and said, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first,
but since you reject it and condemn yourselves as unworthy of eternal life,
we turn to the Gentiles.
In our second reading from the book of Revelation, the
apostle John – banished by the Romans to the isle of Patmos because he continued
to preach the name of Jesus -- also spoke and wrote of Jesus’ gift of life
through forgiveness of sins:
These are the ones who have washed
their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb Who is in the centre
of the throne (and) will lead them to springs of life-giving water.
Jesus Himself had, of course, begun His Gospel proclamation
along the path prepared for Him by John the Baptist, after whose arrest we are
told that (Mark 1: 14-15):
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the
Gospel of God, “This is the time of fulfilment. The Kingdom of God is at
hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
Jesus met great opposition to His teaching on eternal life, due, in part, to the fact that He claimed the ability to raise – by His offer of Life – not only some already in the tomb, but also others, physically alive as proud but subservient leaders of a stubborn people, but who did not know they were already spiritually dead.
If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. I have told you and you do not believe
Me. The works I do in My Father’s name –
(and) I have shown you many (such) good works -- testify to Me, but you do not
believe. My sheep hear My voice; I know
them and they follow Me. I give them
eternal life. (John 10:24-28)
Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is
coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and
those who hear will live. For just as
the Father has life in Himself, so also, He gave to His Son the possession
of life in Himself. (John 5:25-26)
I
give them eternal life and they shall never perish.
Jesus expected of His hearers and questioners both a fundamental
sincerity of purpose, wanting to truly know what God was actually promising,
and also an understanding of good-will trying to hear and correctly understand
those promises:
The works that the Father gave Me to
accomplish, these works that I perform, testify on My behalf that the Father
has sent Me. (John 5:25s., 36.)
My teaching is not My own but is from
the One who sent Me. Whoever chooses to
do His will shall know whether My teaching is from God or whether I speak on My
own. (John 7:17)
And Jesus had every right to demand
such expectations, because He had come, and had been sent by His heavenly Father,
in order that He might sinlessly share our earthly life and destroy our personal
sin by the most bloody and painful sacrifice of Himself in His earthly body and
bestow on us the GIFT of His most
Holy Spirit.
As Christians and Catholics, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we
knew with absolute certitude that eternal life and blessedness were to be
definitively given to us, individually! How truly wonderful!!
No one, however, no matter how holy, has such certitude. That is the Church’s teaching: no one is sure
of avoiding sin let alone gaining heaven, outside a special, personal,
revelation and promise from God.
Of course, we tend to think that we would do better
and be better, if we had the peace, strength, and joy of such
certitude. But God doesn’t think on those
lines. He offers us a salvation won at
the cost of His own beloved Son’s earthly suffering and death; therefore, He wills
that we learn how to accept appropriately such a blessing. He does this because He wants us to live by
His mercy as His truly adopted children, able to hold up their heads as
authentic members in Jesus, vitally alive in His heavenly family. He wants us to risk our human all for
Him, by a humble willingness to repent of past sins and by a courageously hopeful
commitment of ourselves in a leap of faith that responds both to His, the
Father’s, leap of mercy and compassion when sending His Son for our salvation,
and to the Son’s obedient leap of faith in the One Who sent Him willingly from
heaven to earth for love of those He was thus sent to lead from earth to heaven.
People of God, dear Brothers and
Sisters in Christ, what are our present-day attitudes to that Gospel duo of
saving grace and eternal life? I know,
what they should be for all of us: repent and rejoice in the Lord, yes, rejoice
in the Lord
We hear today many who speak
authoritatively not about about the evangelization of sinners, which is our
business, as about the forgiveness of sinners which is ultimately God’s
business; and there are so very many who speak in such a way as to imply or
at least suggest that, really, there are no sinners, only people who are medically
sick in one way or another (faulty genes, mental or emotional disorders, pressures
of life, lack of necessary education or living resources etc.), together with a
present-day insensitivity of medical science which, they confidently insinuate,
is as yet regrettably unable to correctly identify other quite natural afflictions
still mistakenly thought of as a basis for sinful actions.
I remember once reading in a Catholic paper: ‘The Church needs to understand families and individuals in all their complexity’. And then I think of Jesus, after being called upon for His opinion concerning Moses’ command of stoning, speaking with the woman taken in adultery: ‘Woman, has anyone condemned you? Neither do I. Go, and sin no more.’
There, Jesus simply stated
the reality of sin, condemned it, and
warned the woman against any further sin.
He then bade her go away and listen to God’s grace whispering to her in
her heart. There was no complexity there
for Jesus, only transparent simplicity: the reality of sin, the need to
recognize the death threat it brought with it, and to gratefully repent and
improve.
Did Jesus ever have a heart-to-heart
talk with Judas Iscariot in all his complexity; or did He not again as
always, trust His Father’s love and acknowledge His Father’s wisdom and power to
knock on the door of Judas’ heart for any possible opening?
Today there are far too many words of men crowding out the word of God, and Jesus’ word ‘repent’’ is not normally one of them! Is that because ‘repent’ is religiously incorrect today, or is it not rather that ‘repent’ is religiously inconceivable today?
Explanations are given which make
ever broader, push ever further apart, the boundaries traditionally known and
acknowledged to have been set by God.
Public punishments were, at times in the past, sadly and wrongfully meted
out (children referred to as ‘bastards’, gays publicly ridiculed and criminally
punished etc.), especially when the political power was regarded, and relied
upon, as the civil arm of the Church. Today,
however, getting rid of such past evils (we can speak of ‘sin and evils’ when
apparently accusing or implicating the Church but not when speaking of types of
modern behaviour or of modern social laws and structures!) puts us in most
serious danger of ‘losing the baby with the bathwater’.
Jesus repeatedly and most explicitly
spoke of the supreme need to recognize and repent of personal sin; none being good, but God alone. Such personal sin results, of course, from
personal and willed acts, often external actions which the Church has the right
and the duty to label -- for the guidance and protection of her people --
as sinful actions, but which God alone can definitively and eternally judge
as sinful acts by the individuals concerned.
When we turn to the Scriptures, we do
not find any of the slate-washing of sin so popular with the modern opinion-givers
and makers:
The rest of the human race who were
not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands,
to give up the worship of demons and idols made from gold, silver, bronze,
stone, and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders,
their magic portions, their fornication, or their thefts.
(Revelation 9:20-21)
Where, in popular human estimation and
for the sake of pride or pleasure, sin cannot be accepted as a reality; and when
such a disturbing idea as ‘sinful’ is only to be mentioned with words of
ridicule or countered by excuses; when emotions are allowed to justify human
actions to such an extent that they by-pass or even deny the existence of any ruling
human will and therefore of any real responsibility; then everything
goes: there is no longer, for such people, any truth; only opinions; and
ultimately, the only opinions worth holding are those which turn out to be popular
opinions.
Dear People of God, hold fast to a
saving awareness of the reality of sin, thanks to which we can aspire to a divine life
which is promised and indeed already being made recognizable and irresistibly
attractive for all called to believe in the goodness, beauty, and truth of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Repent,
learn to live, and find true delight in loving aright the beautiful creation around
us, and the one God, and most-loving Father, of us all.
