Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year (C)
(Acts of the
Apostles 14:21-27; Revelation 21:1-5; St. John’s Gospel 13:31-35)
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I, John, saw a new Jerusalem, God’s dwelling with His people as
their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. The One who sat on
the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”
God's work of making all things new began with Jesus, our
Lord and Saviour: Son of God, Son of Mary of Nazareth, and therefore, Son of
Man:
Behold, God’s
dwelling is with the human race.
The Son shared with His Father and the Holy Spirit in the original
creation when God made all things through the Son in the Spirit; that is why --
now that the saving work of making all things new is about to be inaugurated – the Son Incarnate, Jesus of
Nazareth, having been crucified and raised from the dead in the power of the
Spirit, appeared to His Apostles locked in the Upper Room for fear of the Jews
and breathed His Spirit on them. His breathing upon them was
precisely the sign of a new creation being made. Just as God had breathed on
His original creation:
The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
So Jesus, appearing in the midst of His disciples and having shown
them the wounds in His hands and His side, said to them (John 20:19-22):
Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send
you." And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said,
"Receive the Holy Spirit.”
God is in the process of making all things new, and Jesus, the
Risen Lord, shares in His Father’s work by breathing the Holy Spirit upon His
Apostles, thereby making them the nucleus of that new creation where sin is to
be overthrown by the cleansing and empowering presence of God's most Holy
Spirit.
A new creation needs to be sustained by a new Food, and at the
Last Supper Jesus gave new Bread and new Wine to His potential Church, the new
Family of God, to which He also gave a new commandment:
My children I will be with you only little while longer. I give you a new commandment: love one
another. As I have loved you. So you
also should love one another.
LIFE and LOVE! That is what Christianity is all about: being
gifted, even here on earth, with an initial, but truly authentic, share in the
divine life of love in heaven!!
What are life and love all about in our modern world however?
Governments of all kinds prescribe life-styles for those under
their power. Even … I was actually going to write, ‘even Christian
governments’ … but then I thought, are there any Christian
governments? Certainly not in England, America, Europe. Those governments of what used to call
themselves Christian countries now proclaim and impose nothing better than
their own up-to-date version of officially approved, politically correct,
‘ethical’ living; smattered here and there with shattered vestiges of what was
formerly beautiful Christian practice … speaking, for example, of marriage,
where husband and wife can now be two young women, two elderly men; and of family,
where non-natural children (non-natural – not of themselves indeed – but for
such a union) are bestowed with government blessing upon ‘couples’ chosen for
all sorts of supposed abilities and qualities, except that of being able to
transmit, give, bestow, life! Such
ethical living is a wayward humanities’ own concoction, not a witness to the
saving teaching of Jesus, the Man sent by God for our salvation.
What do the majority of our contemporaries think love is all
about? It is the most bastardized word
or concept of all in our modern society, because its origin is sublime and its ‘work’
is meant to be pre-eminently dignifying and fulfilling. However, ‘love’
in the Hollywood sense of the word, disseminated all over the world in lurid
images and sordid language, is used to promote and justify a degrading and
destructive mixture of sexual lust and pleasure, pride, violence and vengeance,
instead of beauty and purpose, joy and
hope, patience and peace for even the bleakest of human situations.
‘Family’ and
‘love’, two most sublime words when lived in accordance with their original
Christian significance and open to their promised spiritual power, become poisonous
when used by specious scholars as propaganda or by irreligious modern men and
women as words to cover up or excuse what are merely clamorous demands of the
flesh (which so quickly turns to corruption) and aspirations that look no
further than the grave (proving themselves to be ultimately selfish).
LIFE and LOVE in the Eucharist! That is what Catholic
Christianity is all about.
Our closest bond is, humanly speaking, that of flesh and blood;
and God’s new creation is not alien to, at variance with, such a deep-rooted,
natural human awareness. That bond, however, is made supernatural and becomes
capable of sustaining eternal life and the ultimate love only by our partaking
of and sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ! As Jesus the Risen Christ,
our Lord and Saviour offers Himself to us as food for eternal life, we
are thereby made uniquely and supremely one
as adopted Children of God, the family of Him Who is pleased to be the one
sublime Father of us all. It is not human family, not even shared
sufferings, most certainly not racial superiority or hatreds (ISIS), that can
truly and sublimely unite us, but only and exclusively our being one with
each other in Jesus -- the supreme, divine, reality in the
whole of God's creation -- by the Spirit, for the Father, fulfilling His plan
and purpose to make ‘all things new’:
As the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so
he who feeds on Me will live because of Me; (John 6:57)
So then, let us do good to all, but especially to those who
belong to the family of the faith; (Galatians
6:10); and again (1 Peter 2:17):
Honour everyone. Love the
family of believers. Fear God.
To further
understand this essential aspect of Jesus let us look yet more closely at the
Gospel.
Jesus was proud,
humanly speaking, to be a Jew and member of God’s Chosen People meant to serve
the salvation of all mankind:
The woman said to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a
prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain; but you people
say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her,
“Believe Me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither
on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do
not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the
Jews. (John 44:19-22)
Again, recall Jesus emphasizing His solidarity, oneness, with
another particular group:
While Jesus was still speaking to the crowds, His mother and His
brothers appeared outside, (asking) to speak with Him. But He said in
reply to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother? Who are My brothers?”
And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, “Here are My mother
and My brothers. For whoever does the will of My heavenly Father is My
brother, and sister, and mother.”
(Matthew 12:46–50)
‘Whoever does
the will of My heavenly Father is My real family’, Jesus makes abundantly
clear.
Our modern rationalists, political propagandists, and others
deeply opposed to religion, love to show and abuse their remembrance of certain
Christian teachings and aspirations, by ever reasserting modern versions or
adaptations of the revolutionary trinity, Liberty, Fraternity and Equality; most
beautiful Christian concepts indeed, but idealized beyond truthfulness and viability
as ways of human progress by excluding the very, very, human reality of sin
which requires the Christian awareness and practice of repentance and -- most objectionably
for such revolutionaries -- the practice of Christian humility before God and
man.
Dear People of God, our liturgical Sacrifice of the Eucharist and
our personal sacramental reception of, and commitment to, the Fruit of that
sacrifice, is the supreme seal of mankind’s saving oneness with Jesus and growth
in filial appreciation of the Father’s eternal love for His adopted
children, and thus embraces our human diversity in a sacred bond of mutual
reverence and shared rejoicing.
Treasure your Mass, dear People of God, and pray with confidence
for Mother Church.
(2022)
