4th. Sunday of Eastertide (A)
(Acts 2:14,
36-41; 1st. Peter 2:20-25; John 10:1-10)
People of
God, there was something of particular interest for us in today’s reading taken
from the first letter of St. Peter sent:
To God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered
throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. (NIV)
Those
places form part of what we now know as modern Turkey and touch also upon
those mountain areas where the Kurds today are trying to find a home and a
national identity for themselves. Now, those Christians to whom Peter was
writing were only recent converts and Peter was seeking to encourage,
strengthen, and to guide them in the ways of Christ, and I want you to note how
he sets about it:
What credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults,
you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it
patiently, this is commendable before God. For to this you were
called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you
should follow His steps.
Such was
the way the early Church was built up: Christians were taught and encouraged to
face up to the difficulties of their personal situation with their eyes firmly
fixed on the historic Person of Christ Who suffered and died to redeem us from
the sin which is in the world and of the world. In such teaching Peter
was being absolutely faithful to Jesus Who said to His disciples (John
15:19):
If you were of the world, the world would love its
own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you.
Isn’t it
strange then, that in response to today’s world-wide persecution of millions of
Catholics and Christians who are suffering not only pain, great distress and
loss, but even most violent death, we hear few Church messages of whole-hearted
Christian support, encouragement, and guidance -- not merely human
sympathy -- for those thus suffering, in comparison with sometimes
controversial messages for others with moral difficulties and personal
problems.
The nascent
Church knew her place, she preached and gladly poured out her
blood to preach Christ our Saviour and Redeemer that all might hear the
Good News He brings; it was God alone, as she well knew, Who persuaded
people; and those He chose, He gave to Jesus:
No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draw him.
(John 6:44)
Our first
reading gave faithful Peter’s presentation of Jesus’ teaching:
Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name
of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the
Gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is made to you and to your
children and to all those far off, whomever our God will call.
Today the
Church’s message too often seems directed not to seriously and zealously
preaching Jesus as Lord and Saviour -- the Christ -- so much as rather
pathetically trying to persuade people to come to Church!
In today’s
readings Peter is so confident in the Jesus he preaches as being the sublime example
and supreme reward, the all-sufficient strength and peace, for Christians under
persecution, that he has no qualms whatsoever about encouraging and exhorting
them to face up to their trials with patience, confidence, and courage:
Because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an
example that you should follow in His footsteps.
Such a
message, however, does not make pleasant hearing for our modern consumer
society, where the practical endeavour of the vast majority is to enjoy life in
this passing world to the utmost, with nothing more than an occasional polemical
interest in Christianity; and sadly, the Church’s proclamation is far too often
directed in response to, and occasionally watered-down for, such people, who
have no personal interest in either faith or salvation.
After
rising from the dead in glory Jesus did not live again here on earth. He
did, indeed, show Himself to His intimate disciples several times on earth, but
on all those occasions He appeared as One Who had ascended, that is, One Who
was now living at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. He had risen in
order to ascend, because the life in which He rose, the life He offers to share
with us, was, is, heavenly life, eternal and glorious. Those who
imagine they can live as good Christians while aiming no higher than earthly
happiness are at the best like those fireworks we call "damp squibs":
made to be rockets, they do indeed burn when their match is applied, but they
find it hard to lift off into the air, and if they should begin to rise they go
up only a few fretful yards before spluttering and flopping down to ground
again with no further possibility of fulfilling their promise.
Those to
whom Peter addressed his message, on the other hand, were Jesus' true
disciples, men and women under no illusions that the world which crucified
their Lord might in some way come to love them:
If you were of the world, the world would love its
own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you.
However,
they also knew and wholeheartedly accepted that, thanks to Jesus’ Death and
Resurrection, they were no longer helpless under the sin of the world.
They rejoiced in the conviction that they could now overcome the world,
in and with Jesus Who conquered sin and death by rising in the glory of the
Holy Spirit, and Who was offering to all who would believe in Him and in His
saving proclamation of God’s Fatherly love, a share in the presence and power
of His own Most Holy Spirit :
These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may
have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I
have overcome the world. (John 16:33).
Therefore,
you can see how much the early Christians and the early Church differed from
many, probably the majority, of Catholics and Christians today.
It is
commonly thought today that the way to help people to the Faith is by chatting
with those who are older around dinner tables, while the faith of young people
and of converts can best be strengthened by making worship interesting and
attractive, drawing them into social activities and good works. Now all
those activities may well have some helpful part to play at the beginning of
Christian life, but they have little or no role in the strengthening of
Christ’s faithful to face the trials and difficulties their faith will
encounter in the course of real life, when things turn out differently to their
expectations and when trials, misunderstandings, and even hostility or
persecutions, come, perhaps undeservedly, their way.
Peter was
very realistic in his address to the new converts of Asia Minor, and he not
only warned them of the difficulties they would have to face, but even said it
was their vocation, their calling, not only to suffer in that way
but also to triumph over their trials in the strength of Christ:
What credit is it if, when you are beaten for your
faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it
patiently, this is commendable before God. For to this you were
called, because Christ when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He
suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges
righteously.
Speaking in
this way Peter was preparing and strengthening them for whatever might arise;
and we ourselves -- aspiring to be sincere believers in and true disciples of
Jesus -- also find his words, after nearly two thousand years, still
refreshingly pertinent and inspiring, oppressed as we are by the sin that is
not only blatantly rampant in the world around us, but also openly and
unashamedly visible in our own society, and even to be found skulking among and
in our very selves.
St. Peter
makes very clear for us why we have felt the need to come here to Jesus where
He promised to abide with us, that is, in His Church, our Mother, for we have
come wanting with Peter’s converts, to be healed by Jesus, to learn from Him
and be empowered by His Spirit that we might, by overcoming the sin of the
world, bear authentic witness to Him and to the wondrous love of the Father Who
sent Him among us to save us.
We know,
however, that our healing will be a life-long process, for the Holy Spirit of
Jesus must open up our most secret selves so that, penetrating to the core of
our being, He might form us in all truth and sincerity into a likeness of
Jesus. God needs to temper His power to our frailty with the result that
the Holy Spirit working in us can only change us gradually. Moreover, the
Spirit, having begun to work His wonders in us, has then to encourage us
personally to commit ourselves to following His influence and guidance with
confidence, trust, and courage, and that too is difficult and takes time,
because we instinctively want to walk with others, to be comforted and
appreciated by our fellows, and too often we find ourselves unable to hear or
understand, neither will we follow, when the Spirit of Jesus would lead us
along a way that is not level, well sign-posted, or well-trodden, by
others. We love to think of ourselves as unique, but most are usually
both slow and reluctant to accept the consequences of such a quality.
Today
therefore, dear People of God, let our Easter rejoicing be both whole-hearted
and truly profitable for ourselves and for Mother Church: let us make it our
delight to proclaim Jesus as Our Saviour and our Risen Lord, our whole
confidence and sure hope; and as we do that let us renew our admiration of and
prayers for all those saints in Mother Church suffering so much – even on this
very day -- for their faithfulness to Jesus and His Church. With them,
let us bolster our hearts as we listen carefully and trustfully to Jesus’
words:
Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the
sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep
did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be
saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill,
and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it
more abundantly.
Jesus is
indeed the Way, the firstborn from the dead; He is the Truth which alone can
satisfy and fulfil our deepest longings; He is Life itself in the fulness of
all its possibilities and divinely eternal. Through faith in Jesus we
have entered into the flock of God, and Jesus like a good shepherd leads His
flock to nourishing pasture. Having conquered the sin of the world, and
having been raised -- still in our likeness -- to new and eternal life in the
Spirit of Glory, Jesus is able to fulfil what He promised:
I give them eternal life, they shall never perish
neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has
given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of
My Father's hand. I and My Father are one. (John 10:29-30)
Eastertide
is a time of supreme joy for all Christians, but let us learn from Peter who,
inspired by the Spirit of Jesus, spoke words of truth that pierce the fog of
worldly deceits and our own self-indulgent fancies:
(Peter) testified and exhorted them, saying, "Be
saved from this perverse generation."
Our
rejoicing today should be for the fact that in the Risen Lord we can now
overcome our own sinfulness and the corruption and deceit of the world around
us thanks to His bequest of His most Holy Spirit Who dwells in us, offering us
strength and light to follow Jesus perseveringly along the way that leads to
sublime fulfilment in our heavenly and eternal home.
