5th Sunday of Eastertide, Year (A)
(Acts
6:1-7; 1st. Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12)
People of God, let me draw your attention to the first
reading, in the course of which you heard of the Apostles speaking to the early
Christians in Jerusalem:
The Twelve called together the
community of the disciples and said, "It is not right for us to neglect
the word of God to serve at table. Brothers,
select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Holy Spirit and
wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves
to prayer and to the ministry of the word.
You will, I trust, appreciate from that passage the
importance the Apostles attached to their 'ministry of the word', which included
what we would call today the duty of preaching.
In this they were being totally faithful to the Lord's command, for we
are told (Mark 16:14-16) that, after His Resurrection:
Jesus appeared to the eleven as
they sat at the table; and He said to them, "Go into the whole world and preach
the gospel to every creature. He who
believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be
condemned."
‘Preach’, means ‘proclaim’, with a difference. ‘Proclaim’ refers to any piece of information
destined for public awareness: Augustus was proclaimed throughout the
Roman world. ‘Preach’ refers to the Gospel of Jesus destined for personal appreciation. Proclamation requires an official herald;
preaching needs a priest of the Church or official disciple of Mother Church. Proclamation requires some dignity, accurate information,
a strong voice, and clear pronunciation; preaching requires personal commitment
to Jesus and Mother Church, approved teaching (Church doctrine), and spiritual
appreciation only gained/learnt through humble initiation and authentic guidance.
With that in mind perhaps someone might think: ‘But what
about the Mass?’
The Apostles regarded the celebration of the Eucharistic to
be of supreme importance, indeed absolutely necessary, for the Church, as
St. Paul writes in his letter to his Christian community at Corinth (1
Corinthians 11:23-24):
I received from the Lord that
which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which
He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said,
"Take, eat; this is My body which is (broken) for you; do this in
remembrance of Me."
For the Apostles, therefore, there could be no conflict of
precedence between ministry of the Word and celebration of the Eucharist, since
they are two co-related aspects of their proclamation of Jesus as Lord and Saviour: as St. Peter said
in our first reading:
We shall devote ourselves to
prayer and to the ministry of the word.
The Eucharist is supreme prayer: the prayer of the
Church -- the Body of Christ -- with that of her Head, Christ Himself. Preaching the Gospel is the commission given
by Jesus to His faithful Apostles, for the fulfilment of which He endowed them
with the gift of His own most Holy Spirit, that by their preaching they might spread
His Good News far and wide and thus continue His work of redemption for men and
women of all times.
Consequently, a priest’s calling, as a sharer in the
Bishops' Apostolic mission in Mother Church today, is to follow the Apostles'
example by his own ministry of the Word and offering of the Eucharistic
Sacrifice, both of which he does pre-eminently in his celebration of the Eucharist
and proclamation of Christ at Holy Mass on Sunday.
Here, People of God, we should notice that the ministry of
the Word is not, primarily, a matter of being able to talk well, for true
preaching is the result of the Holy Spirit working in and through disciples – specially
adapted as His instruments by their priestly training and ordination -- obediently
opening themselves up to His grace and making themselves useful for His
purposes. And the supreme purpose for such Spirit-guided preaching is not
to try to make Jesus humanly popular but to proclaim His divine Person and saving
Truth, in order that God – Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit -- might be worshipped, loved, and
served aright in the House of God which is Mother Church wherever she is assembled
in His Name for Sunday worship.
'Preach' is a much-abused word; being given connotations that
are generally critical, including
hypocritical, wearisome, un-necessary, self-aggrandizement. And yet, preaching is essentially the full proclamation
of Gospel truth, and it necessarily involves explanation, exhortation,
and spiritual appreciation.
Obviously, the greatest dangers for the preacher are
spiritual pride, self-seeking, gospel ignorance, and lack of confidence in the guidance of the
Holy Spirit, and consequently, a desire to please people (making Jesus humanly popular!).
Mother Church alone has been given the fullness of the
Spirit and no individual member of the Church has such fullness: all her children
receive the Spirit entrusted to them, through her, for a particular
purpose and function. We were shown this
clearly in the first reading where Peter, speaking on behalf of all the
Apostles, said:
Brothers, select from among you
seven reputable men, filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall
appoint to this task.
Why did the Apostles need to lay their hands on these
chosen men? Their fullness of the Spirit
and of wisdom at that time was such as to have enabled them to live as disciples
of Jesus meriting a good reputation in their general service of the Christian
community. However, in order to fulfil
in the name of the infant Church the special function of looking after those
who were most needy -- the widows -- they had to be given the Spirit anew:
They presented these
men to the apostles who prayed and laid hands on them.
No special God-willed work, in-and-for-the-Church, can be
done without a special gift of the Spirit for that purpose. The Spirit guides, preserves, strengthens and
inspires for the good of the Church, and He will never allow the gates of Hell
to prevail against the Church. And so, He does most especially protect the
whole People of God by blessing and prospering the sincere efforts of individuals
called to serve either in the ordained ministry, or as living members of
what St. Peter recognized as:
A chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people of His own, so that you may announce the
praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.
That is why Jesus said to His Apostles (John 16:13-14) and says
also to His Church today:
When He, the Spirit of truth, has
come, He will guide you into all truth; He will glorify Me, for He will take of
what is Mine and declare it to you.
Many of the present difficulties and trials of Mother Church stem, most certainly, from an ignorance of the working of the Holy Spirit, and an overdose of human pride. The Holy Spirit is always and only given to build up Mother Church for the glory of God, never to back up human pride or indulge human passions.
Unfortunately, there are some Catholics who think that their learning or
intelligence enables them, while others imagine that the vehemence of
their personal feelings compels them, or even that their own social or
ecclesiastical standing allows them, to intrude themselves into even the
most sacred matters of Church’s teaching and practice, as is happening in the
over-rich German Church today. These wrong attitudes have bedevilled Mother
Church from the beginning, as St. John shows when speaking in the book of
Revelation (3:1-3) to those with a false opinion of themselves or a false
reputation with others:
I know all the things you do, and that you have
a reputation for being alive—but you are dead.
Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold
to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to
you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.
People of God, St. Peter tells us that Jesus,
The stone which the
builders rejected, has become the chief cornerstone;
and that we, His disciples:
As living stones, are being built
up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
That spiritual house is Mother Church where the Holy Spirit
dwells and is ever at work to form each and every one of us in the likeness of
Jesus as a holy priesthood.
However, our own individual and personal spiritual
sacrifices can only be acceptable to God: first of all, because of the real
sacrifice of Jesus Himself which alone gives worthy praise and glory to the God
the Father; and secondly, because some members of the Church have been called
and ordained to become instruments of the Spirit of Jesus, in the continued
offering, even today, of Jesus’ one, real, and perennial self-sacrifice-of-love
to the Father. Because of that eternally-abiding
and ever-contemporary offering of Jesus' sacrifice, all our individual
spiritual sacrifices can become acceptable to the God and Father Who is All in
all; and here, the sacrifices Christian parents make to advance their children
as sincere Christians and truly human beings, are of the utmost importance.
People of God, our hope and our future is bound up with
Jesus and in Him we have a sublime vocation.
Each and every one of us should try to build up our relationship with
Him more and more: for though we have a calling, we still have to work at it,
and we cannot fulfil our calling without ever-greater grace and strength of the
Holy Spirit. God is All in all for us,
and He wants us to give Him our all, in return.
In Mother Church we are called and are enabled to do just that, by the
abiding presence of Jesus in the Church, and the constant working of His Holy
Spirit in the Church and in our lives.
Let us therefore go out into the world after today’s
Eucharist inspired to proclaim our Blessed Lord Jesus, Whose Truth is
the only Way, and by Whose Holy Spirit of Life alone can we give fitting
praise and honour to the Father of sublime Mystery and Majesty, Whose eternal Presence, Glory, and Power, in Mother
Church and in our individual and most personal lives, can only be understood as
LOVE: heavenly, sacrificial, and eternal. Amen.
