6th. Sunday of Easter (A)
(Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1st. Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21)
In our Gospel reading we heard Jesus make this promise to
His disciples:
I will ask the Father, and He
will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom
the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows Him. But you know Him for He remains with you and
will be in you.
You know Him for He remains
with you: under God’s Providence, though Jesus would apparently depart from
His disciples, the Holy Spirit would come to abide with them, keeping them as
one: one, in their shared memories of life with Jesus from its beginnings in
Galilee to His Death, Resurrection, and final Ascension into heaven; one in their
remembrance of His divine teaching, inspiring them with the ineffable hope of
His heavenly promises, and climaxing in their increasing awareness and assurance of the mysterious actuality of His promise
to be with them always.
Moreover, that same Spirit of Truth, Jesus went on to say:
Will be in you.
For -- with Jesus having ascended to heaven and asked it of
the Father -- He will come to be with them as Pentecostal Endowment for the whole
Body of Christ; and as Eucharistic Gift and Sustenance, to be in them individually
as disciples to be formed in the likeness of Jesus by Him as living members of
the One Body for the honour and glory of the Father.
Because I live, you will live.
Indeed, He even went on to promise:
Most assuredly, I say to you, he
who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than
these he will do; because I go to My Father.
People of God, let us learn from the Apostles just how
important is the Gift of the Holy Spirit Whom Jesus promises, the Spirit we
indeed, at this joyous season, are now awaiting and expecting:
When the Apostles in Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent off Peter and John, who
went down there and prayed for the converts, asking that they might receive the
Holy Spirit. (Acts
8:14-15)
Today we, as living members of the Church, the Body of
Christ, are in the constant process of being formed by the Holy Spirit Who is
living with us and in us. And yet, every
day we are being shown, with brutal clarity at times, that the society for
which we are meant to be both sanctifying salt and guiding light is deeply
alienated from God, to such an extent that we are inevitably forced to call
into question the witness that we, as members of the Body of Christ and as
channels for the Spirit of God, are giving to Jesus. We look, therefore, with ever more humble
expectation, for a renewed coming of the Spirit of Truth this Pentecost, that
He, the Advocate and Helper as Jesus called Him, might indeed help and enable
us to pursue more effectively the work for which we have been chosen, the work
of proclaiming Jesus’ Gospel of Truth and Love with its joyous offer of eternal
salvation, to the whole of mankind.
Today we are in a situation very much like that in which
the first Christians found themselves in the pagan society of the Roman Empire
and to whom Peter wrote in his first letter, as we heard:
Sanctify Christ as Lord in your
hearts. Always be ready to give an
explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness
and reverence, keeping your conscience clear.
‘Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts’, that is, guard
against the poisonous atmosphere of much of today's popular thinking, proclamation,
and practice, lest it corrode the strength and beauty of your relationship with
Jesus; and, be ready, always ready, to give both an account and a defence of
your faith to everyone who asks you.
So often,
in countless little ways, we Catholics and Christians can close ourselves to
the Spirit of truth with the result that He is not able to work effectively
either in us or through us:
The Lord said, “My Spirit will
not remain in a human being for ever, because he is mortal flesh.” (Genesis
6:3)
We can so easily live as children of the flesh: yielding to
vanity, refusing to accept unpleasant truths, speaking wild words from
emotional upset, uttering calculated lies to avoid what we fear, using words as
weapons for aggression rather than as channels of truth and mutual
understanding; and in doing such things we shackle the work of the Spirit
within us, indeed, perhaps we may even drive His presence from us. We must never forget that our enemy is the
spirit of deceit, and we should never allow him to deceive us into thinking
that we can rightly express truth in a way that needlessly hurts, for the
Spirit of Truth is also the Spirit of Love, and our calling in Jesus is to live
and express the truth in love.
Here, however, a major question arises: what sort of love
should we have for Jesus and proclaim as the truth about Him?
In last week’s Gospel reading Philip hurt our blessed Lord
deeply when he asked:
Master, show us the
Father and that will be enough for us!
To which Jesus answered:
Have I been with you for so long
a time and you still do not know Me, Philip?
Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.
How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?
There we have a most perfect illustration of the absolute
importance of the Spirit’s work of ‘forming us in the likeness of Jesus’. Philip had not been looking aright at
Jesus: he had been loving Him, yes; but
in too human a way; in relation, that is, to himself, Philip! He had not been regarding Jesus as Son of the
Father enough. It is indeed lovely and
most helpful to recognize -- with many popular and indeed beautiful spiritual
songs -- Jesus as our Friend. But, that
is most certainly not enough, for there is so much more to Jesus!! Love for
Jesus is not true, nor is it authentically Christian, if its content of human
affection and commitment tries to transcend, pre-empt, Christian Faith in
Jesus:
Do
you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?
And perhaps the very best way to get things right in this
respect is to ever remember and reverence, love and delight in, Jesus’ own most
sublime and total love for His Father, the very root and source of and ultimate
model for, His love for us. The whole of
His Passion and Death on the Cross of Calvary was motivated, sustained, and
sublimated by His transcendent love for His Father:
The world must know that I love
the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me. Get up, let us
go. (John 14:31)
If we could admire, appreciate, and delight in that love aright
then we would indeed be able to proclaim the truth about, and bear authentic
witness to, Jesus before the whole world and thereby give unparalleled glory to
God the Father.
We have to recognize that in today’s world and our modern
society we do not address a ‘People of God’ prepared for over a thousand years
to hear and understand the word of God.
As Jesus Himself told us, the Advocate Whom He asked the Father to send to
us and abide always with us is unacceptable to the world because it can neither
see nor does it know Him! How then is
the Gospel to be proclaimed?
As disciples of Him of Whom the prophet Isaiah (42:2)
foretold:
He will not cry out nor raise His
voice, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street;
we cannot always be condemning the world. Nor, as disciples of the same Jesus of whom
the prophet went on to say:
A bruised reed He will not break
and smoking flax He will not quench;
can we always be arguing with youngsters who are misguided
or older sinners who have turned their backs on God.
Here we need to pay
attention to Peter addressing us in the second reading:
Sanctify Christ as Lord in your
hearts! Always be ready to give an explanation
to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.
You will remember that Jesus had previously said (John
6:44):
No one can come to Me unless the
Father Who sent Me draw him.
Peter would therefore seem to be advising us to allow
ourselves to become instruments through whom the Father is able to draw
His chosen ones to Jesus. We are not to try to take over the Father’s work by
ourselves choosing, cajoling, and chivvying, exhorting and harassing, and always
with an eye on Church numbers and popular reputation before Catholic sincerity
and truth, or Christian service. Our
very first and most important activity must be to, ‘Sanctify Christ as Lord in
our hearts’, and if our love for and appreciation of Jesus is authentic and
sincere, the Father will be able to use us to help and serve those He
chooses to call and draw to Jesus in Mother Church.
People of God, Jesus' promise to His disciples still holds
for you and me in our world today. We
are called to continue His work, indeed, as He Himself said, to do even greater
works for Him, in His Spirit. For this,
however, we need to prepare and pray for the coming anew of His Spirit into our
hearts and lives by trusting
ourselves ever more confidently to His abiding presence in Mother Church, and to the power of prayer when, as her children, we seek to
respond and open ourselves up, to the One Who is ever knocking at the door of
our hearts for deeper communion with us.
In that way may we be truly ready and prepared to:
Give an explanation to anyone who
asks for a reason for our hope;
the hope, that is, which is summed up in those few words of
Jesus:
I am the way and the truth and
the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Let us,
therefore, pray for God’s Gift of the Spirit to overshadow Mother Church anew
this coming Pentecost, that the Father’s Name be hallowed -- as Jesus prayed --
in her public worship and proclamation of His Gospel Truth. And
let us aspire to welcome that Spirit of Truth and Love thus pulsating through
the Church into our own personal lives
of witness and service, that His most holy Will be done in us and
through us; again, as Jesus when on earth, said, ‘Father, not My will but Thine
be done.’
At present our Western world is allowing itself to be diabolically
deceived as it proudly endeavours to demonstrate itself to be holy without
God. Let not us, People of God --
chosen, proud, and eternally grateful to be Catholic and Christian -- be
infected by any such ‘holiness’. Let us,
on the contrary, consider ever more humbly and attentively St. Peter’s advice
and guidance:
Sanctify Christ as Lord in your
hearts. Always be ready to give an
explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with
gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear
