4th Sunday of Easter (Year A) 2014

4^th. Sunday of Eastertide (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 2:36-41; 1^st. Letter of St. Peter 2:20b-25; John’s Gospel 10:1-10)

In today’s Gospel passage, People of God, there is mention of shepherds and their approach to, and relationship with, their sheep; and this is of practical interest for us today since parents, teachers, political leaders, and indeed many others, can be regarded to a greater or lesser extent as included in that word ‘shepherds’. 

Jesus tells us that He Himself:

            Came so that they (the sheep of His flock) might have life.

There were many who had put themselves forward as shepherds to the people in the long course of Israel’s history and more especially in quite recent times; but they had all shown themselves, or had been shown, to be not shepherds for life and salvation but bringers of slaughter and destruction as Jesus goes on to tell us:

            All who came before Me are thieves and robbers.’

And He calls them ‘thieves and robbers – very strong language for Jesus – because:

Jesus said, ‘I am the gate of the sheepfold.’

They do not enter the sheepfold through the gate but climb over elsewhere.

Whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 

I am the gate.  Anyone who enters through Me will be safe.  He will go freely in and out and be sure of finding pasture.

The whole background of our Gospel reading is to be found in the thirty-fourth chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel.  There the first part is – as in our passage in today’s Gospel reading from St. John – about worthless, ruthless, shepherds who feed themselves not the sheep; who let the flock be scattered over the face of the earth to become prey for wild beasts.

Then the prophet (vv. 11-16) continues:

Thus says the Lord God: Behold I, I Myself will search for My sheep and will seek them out.  I will seek the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the crippled, strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice.  

Therefore, when Jesus said, ‘I am the gate’, He was saying that,

I came in the name of My Father.

Those pseudo-leaders, those false shepherds whom the Jews had followed before Him had not entered through Him; that is, they had not prepared the way for,  spoken of, invoked or witnessed to, Him.  They had done all in their own names and for their own glory; 

You do not accept Me; yet if another comes in his own name, you will accept him.   (John 5:43)

Nevertheless, Jesus, was indeed the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the gate through which God was coming to shepherd His flock.  Through Jesus, the Father Himself would feed the flock, as the prophecy of Ezekiel (vv. 25ss.) foretold:

Thus says the Lord God: My flock shall know that I am the Lord; they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them and that they are My people, the sheep of My pasture.  

Therefore, although God’s people will still have shepherds to lead them in Jesus’ Church, nevertheless, they themselves will, in Christ, be able to recognize God and His truth directly in their hearts: 

(Jesus said:) 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.  Whoever speaks on his own seeks his own glory, but whoever seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is truthful and there is no wrong in Him.  (John 7: 16-19)

Notice then the great freedom of God’s flock in Christ:  ‘I am the gate.  Anyone who enters through Me’ -- that is, whosoever enters God’s sheepfold through faith in and love for, Christ – ‘will go freely in and out and be sure of finding pasture.’   The flock do indeed see, hear, and confidently follow their true shepherds going before them to some future, as yet unseen, destination; but, though still on the way, they are also at times strengthened and even thrilled to recognize God Himself -- the great theme, final destination, and ultimate reason for all that is beautiful and harmonious in their lives – with them, and even Personally present to them in the secret shrine of their own hearts and minds.

This has most important consequences for us.

First of all, the People of God, as a whole, can never be led astray by false teachers, for they are able to recognize the divine truth of Christian teaching causing peace and hope to rise up within their own God-seeking hearts; for Jesus, Head of the Church which is His Body, and the Spirit, the Father-given and Jesus-sent ‘Helper’, are inseparably with and for the Church in all her trials.

As individuals, however, we have the obligation so to live that our God-given ability to respond to divine truth is never obscured, let alone vitiated, at its source in the spontaneous appreciation of our hearts.  Sinful living, pride, indulgence, worldly cares and preoccupations can turn us aside from our Christian commitment and ideals, and gradually lead us to mistake error for truth and to follow false prophets and hirelings instead of good shepherds and even Christ Himself.

Above all, however, through positive endeavours to ‘put on Christ’ by following the teaching of God proclaimed in Mother Church in all its fullness, depth, and amplitude, we can gradually experience a clear and loving response to God’s truth in our souls; and that response can come to mean more and more to us because God has indeed most truly given us an inner divine life which, when fully developed, pulsates in rhyme and rhythm with, and positively thrills in response to, His teaching.  If, therefore, the truths of faith, the life and promises of Jesus in the Scriptures, the Christian vocation of loving obedience to God and service of our neighbour, seem cold, impersonal, and fruitless to us, then it is, perhaps, a fact that God is testing us for our greater good – as He did even with Jesus Himself – or else maybe it is a fault in our way of living the Christian life: perhaps we have been only existing, not really living in Christ: neither loving His Person sincerely nor committing ourselves sufficiently to His Providence.  Whatever be the cause of any such lassitude, we do know most certainly that He has come, as He said, for that one supreme purpose: that we might have life in all its fullness:

            I have come so that (you) may have life and have it to the full.

Therefore, as we proceed in our celebration of this Mass, the great sacrament of Jesus’ life and death for us, let us beg Him for a deeper -- oh so much deeper! -- share in His life and love so that we may truly, fully, realize and know that dwelling of God in our hearts and be enabled thereby to respond with all the love and devotion of which we are capable to His divine truth in all the myriad forms in which we can encounter it here below.  Such is the whole purpose and aim of our new life in Christ Jesus: learning to respond to and vibrate in harmony with the meaning, the purpose, and the music of God’s self-revelation in Mother Church and in creation.

3rd Sunday of Easter Year A 2014

3^rd. Sunday of Easter (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 2:14, 22-33; 1^st. Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35)

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, after His Resurrection, Jesus appeared personally in human form to certain women who had served Him in the course of His public ministry, and to the Apostles.  In today’s Gospel reading, however, we heard of His appearing to two disciples -- one named Cleopas and the other unknown to us – as they were walking to Emmaus, which archaeologists have recently discovered and literally un-earthed, and which seems to have been a wealthy village in close, Sabbath-walk, proximity to Jerusalem.  And although Jesus appeared to Cleopas and his companion in human form, He only became personally known to them in the same way that He wills to reveal Himself to us and all His disciples throughout the ages, that is, in and through the Scriptures and our celebration of the Holy Eucharist.  

Jesus appeared and said to them, "What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?" 

Their hearts and minds were filled with memories of Jesus’ public ministry -- His teaching and controversies and, perhaps above all else, His recent miraculous raising of Lazarus of Bethany from his tomb -- and they had been talking together, lovingly yet painfully, about what had so recently befallen Jesus Himself, and what sort of future His crucifixion boded for their own hopes and for the destiny of Israel.  Without Him, the bottom of their world seemed to have been knocked out, as they explained:

We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. 

By His choice of these two men on the way to Emmaus Jesus shows us that He wills to reveal Himself only to those who seek to know and love Him and who aspire to follow Him; and it is both delightful and inspiring for us to hear how their hearts thrilled and their attention was held spellbound as Jesus -- walking beside them along the dusty road and sharing so simply in their conversation -- gradually revealed and explained to them the significance of the many references to Himself to be found in Israel’s sacred Scriptures:

They said to one another, "Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"

Such was the solace, uplift, new-found confidence, and hope that His words inspired in them that they were most loath to lose his companionship as their own destination was now at hand:

Drawing near to the village where they were going, He indicated that He would have gone farther; but they constrained Him, saying, "Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent." 

And, because of the warmth of their charity and the obvious sincerity and depth of their gratitude, we learn that:

            He went in to stay with them.

Walking along the road together with these two down-cast supporters of His public ministry, and discussing its profound impact on Israel’s religious expectations, Jesus had already rewarded their incipient faith and hope by interpreting the Scriptures for them; and now, at their shared meal, He rewarded their fraternal charity with His Eucharistic self-revelation and gift:

He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.

They were men of faith wanting to hope in the Lord: and Jesus’ revelation of His presence in the Scriptures had already given them renewed confidence and deepened conviction.  However, they still needed the spiritual strength of a personal calling to face up to the difficulties looming ahead on their horizon, and Jesus’ Eucharistic Presence and blessing would give them that required strength of mind and peace of heart to trust and serve Him wholeheartedly no matter what those trials might turn out to be.

With that their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, but He vanished from their sight.

Before that encounter with the Risen Lord they had been leaving Jerusalem each for their own personal reasons; now, however, immediately forgetting themselves, their own interests, and perhaps also -- since it was late, dark, and lonely, on their way back to the city -- their own safety, we are told that: 

They rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together.

There, they learnt that Jesus’ meeting with them was but one of several such appearances, all of which were, it would seem, not merely for individuals but for the comforting and strengthening in faith of the whole Church; and especially was that the case with His appearing to Peter.  

Together, the whole Church, including Mary the Mother of Jesus, prayed over what had happened, and Peter came to understand something of the meaning of these, and subsequent, appearances which led him, at Pentecost, to proclaim publically and in the name of the Church:

Men of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, Whom you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death, God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.  

As members of the Church of Christ founded on Peter the Rock, the two Emmaus disciples would thrill anew to a fresh awareness and deeper appreciation of Jesus’ presence with them -- this time on the way of life -- and to a most acute and astounding experience of the Church as the very Body of Christ, living because Jesus Himself was living and, as her Head, would be with her to the end of time.   Again, they would find in the Church that which they had heard the Lord say and seen Him do – unlock the Scriptures and share the Eucharistic Meal -- for the Lord had expressly commissioned the Apostles to do these things in memory of Himself.  Thus, feeding on the divine pastures of a land flowing with milk and honey, they would gradually learn to give constant praise to God the Father for Jesus’ enduring presence in His Church for the salvation of mankind!  For The Church is, indeed, called to continue and bring to fulfilment the mission of Christ; and it is only the full celebration of Mass -- as liturgy of the Word, and liturgy of the Eucharist, both Sacrifice and Sacrament – that can give supreme glory to God and build up the Church up to maturity as the Body of Christ living to the full by the Spirit of Christ.

At times some Catholics have flirted with the idea that the liturgical celebration of Holy Mass is really only suitable for Sundays and days of obligation and only necessary for occasionally stocking up Hosts for the coming week, flippantly asserting that all that really matters is love for Jesus expressed so simply (and easily!) by the communion of mutual self-giving with Him in our reception of the Eucharist.  That is totally irreverent and quite wrong.  At Holy Mass, the whole Jesus – glorified Lord with His Mystical Body – is called and must ever seek to give supreme glory to the Father in sublime fulfilment of the original purpose of Creation, and in that context only is mankind offered salvation, in Jesus, by the power of the Spirit; and we receive Holy Communion fruitfully only insofar as we are one in mind and heart with Jesus in His sacrificial offering to the Father. 

  

As Catholics and Christians, we must be constantly aware that Jesus’ abiding presence in, with and for, Mother Church is an expression of His love for the Father, and in fulfilment of the purpose for which He was originally sent as Man. The pouring out His Holy Spirit on mankind through the sacraments of Mother Church is done that He might form us all as living members in the One Mystical Body and as individual likenesses to and servants of Christ the Head of that Body, so that the Risen and Glorious Lord might ultimately be able to lead us all into the presence of the Father, as adopted sons and daughters in the supremely beloved and only-begotten Son, for the eternal praise and glory of the Father.  Our response to that awareness and calling constitutes, indeed, our spiritual pilgrimage on earth, and can become our deepest and most abiding foretaste of heavenly charity and joy.

Peter who, in the name of the Church, proclaimed the significance of Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension and His Gift of the Holy Spirit, also teaches us, in the second reading, the sort of response we should give to God who does such great deeds and offers such glorious promises for all who are true disciples of His Son:

If you say ‘Father’ to Him Who judges everyone impartially on the basis of what they have done, you must live in awe of Him during your time on earth.  You know well that it was nothing of passing value -- like silver or gold -- that bought your freedom from the futility of your traditional ways;  you were set free by Christ’s precious blood, blood like that of a lamb without mark or blemish.

So, People of God, rejoice in the Lord always, but always with awe; honour Mother Church and strive to receive her sacraments with both deep reverence and heartfelt love; for reverence and love, far from being irreconcilable, are absolutely necessary for true worship of God.  Without sovereign reverence there is no appreciation of, or possible love for, the all-holy God.  Pray the Holy Spirit -- the Promise of the Father and Pentecostal Gift of Jesus -- to come and rule in your mind and heart so that, under all conditions and in all situations, you may share with Jesus and Mother Church in giving constant worship, praise, glory, and honour, to God the Father, Who sent Jesus as our Saviour and now calls us -- in Him and by His Spirit -- to Himself as His own adopted and most truly loved-in-the-Beloved children.  

                   

Second Sunday of Easter, Year A 2014

2^nd. Sunday of Easter (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 2:42-47; 1^st. Peter 1:3-9;

St. John’s Gospel 20:19-31)

Peace be with you!

That was the ordinary Hebrew greeting, ‘Shalom’; a word to which we have become accustomed through our modern hymns.  But in today’s Gospel passage it has no merely conventional meaning: it is repeated twice, and in both cases is the first word in the clause; two details which tell us that the word ‘peace’ is being strongly emphasized.

At the Last Supper Jesus had promised His disciples:

Peace I leave you, My peace I give you; not as the world gives do I give you.  (John 14:27)

To be able to give peace was generally considered a royal prerogative: that is what kings were for, to win, protect, and confirm peace and prosperity for the people.  But, in Jewish society chosen, taught, and formed by God over thousands of years, it was above all the divine prerogative to give peace.  Jesus as the promised Messiah --- the ‘Prince of Peace’ foretold by Isaiah --- gives His own special gift of peace as the Messianic King.  Moreover, He does not give it as would worldly kings, for they give a peace won through victory in war and maintained by coercion and struggle.  Here in England, when the Romans invaded so many centuries ago, they waged a bitter war against the native inhabitants, and thereby provoked a British chief to remark, ‘Where they make a desert they call it peace!’

Such was never Jesus’ way.  Quite the contrary, He – the Messianic Prince of Peace – won peace by sacrificing Himself.  And now, having risen from the dead, He gives His peace – the fruit of His self-sacrifice – to His disciples, showing them, at the same time, the wounds whereby He had won that peace.

The disciples were filled with joy, 

we read, just as Jesus foretold at the Last Supper where He had said:

You are sad now, but I shall see you again, and your hearts will rejoice with a joy that no one can take from you.  (John 16:21s.)

For Jewish aspirations in those days, peace and joy were distinguishing features of the final glorious time when God would rule as King, giving harmony to human life and to the whole world.  That time had now arrived:

Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you’ and showed them His hands and His side. 

Mankind finds peace before God because Jesus – Son of God and Son of Man –died sinless in His human fidelity to, and love for, God His Father; and then by His rising from the dead He destroyed death along with its ‘sting’, which is sin.  In Jesus and by His Spirit men and women of good will can now overcome sin for love of God.  

 Peace be with you!

Notice that this Paschal gift of peace belongs not to individuals as such, but to the Christian Community as a whole.  It was first given to the Community deliberately gathered together as one for common prayer and in the face of a common threat; it was, that is, given to the Church both militant and witnessing.  Jesus does not makes His presence manifest as some prophetic prodigy for the amazement of the  world, but to the assembled brethren, as divine Head of His mystical Body, His Church, and only here, at this sacred encounter, does He say, ‘Peace be with you.’  And that, incidentally, is why, when we sin and lose our peace with God we have to confess our sins to a priest; because peace is the gift of the Risen Christ to His Church, and in order to regain our lost, broken, peace we have first to be received back into full communion with the Church and share again in her prerogative: Peace, with God and man in Jesus the Risen Christ.   

Jesus then declared:

            As the Father sent Me, so am I sending you.

Once again these words of the Risen Lord Jesus pick up a thread in His discourse at the Last Supper.  There Jesus had prayed for His own who were to remain behind in the world, saying:

Sanctify them in the truth.  Thy word is truth.  As Thou didst send Me into the world, l so I have sent them.  And for their sake I consecrate Myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth.  (John 17:17-19)

That is, before the disciples could be definitively sent out on mission they had to be themselves renewed and re-sourced through the truth: through the word of Jesus and the Spirit of truth.

Righteous Father, the world does not know You, but I know You; and these know that You have sent Me.  I made Your name known to them and will make it known.  (John 17:25s.)

It is the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, Who thus sanctifies the disciples, makes them holy as He, the Spirit, is holy, so that having been consecrated as Jesus was consecrated they could be sent as Jesus was sent:

            As the Father sent Me, so am I sending you.  

Whereupon He ‘breathed’ upon and said:

            Receive the Holy Spirit.

In the book of Genesis we read (2:7):

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

The word ‘breathed’ occurs again in the book of Wisdom (15:11):

            The One Who fashioned him … breathed into him a living spirit.

From these texts we understand that this moment when Jesus breathes His own Spirit into His disciples, is the moment of a new creation, endowing them with eternal life.

For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; 

not just ‘forgotten’ by God, but forgiven, whereby the sinner is restored to peace and supernatural health as well. 

For those whose sins you retain, they are retained;

for there is no peace, no gift of the Holy Spirit, apart from the Body of Christ.  God does not deal with ‘loners’, He has only One beloved, His only-begotten Son, Whom He sent as Jesus among men and Christ for men, and Whom He recognizes as Head of the Body which is His Church, the gathering together in conscious and willed community of all those who believe in Him as the One sent by His heavenly Father.

Here we see the true essence of the Holy Spirit’s work amongst men on earth: to make manifest and give judgment against, to abolish, sin; because He is the Spirit of holiness, the Spirit of the all-holy God. 

Of course, it is undeniably true that He is the Spirit Who worked wonders of all kinds in and through chosen individuals throughout Old Testament history; but His greatest wonder is shown here in the gradual obliteration of sin in the world and the ultimate re-making of sinful men and women into a holy, consecrated, family of God.

Yes, in the Old Testament the Spirit won salvation for Israel on many occasions; but here, ultimate salvation cannot brought about through an occasional triumph in battle, but through the destruction of sin and the forgiveness of sinners.

Yes, in the Old dispensation the Spirit foretold future events, but here in the New Testament His greatest pronouncement is the word of God which consecrates in truth.

Jesus Himself, here on earth, had once sent out some of His disciples on a mission to go before Him to the towns and villages where He Himself was to visit, and we are told that:

He gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out and to heal every disease and every infirmity. (Matthew 10:1)

That sending had been only a trial run, so to speak.  Here, in today’s Gospel we have the real sending, the real mission, of the disciples; and here too we have the real ‘gift’, the real ‘power’ bestowed upon them by Jesus to enable them to fulfil their mission: victory over sin in themselves and authority over sin in others by virtue of themselves having been sanctified in the truth.

And yet the Apostle Thomas himself refused to accept and be sanctified by the truth proclaimed by the infant Church!  As you are aware, Our Lord, knowing Thomas through and through, had pity of his weakness and his ignorance, and allowed him the sight he wanted; but He gave him a very strong rebuke, the words of which abide for an eternal lesson to mankind:

Have you come to believe because you have seen Me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed! 

The beloved disciple John who tells us of this was well aware of the privilege he himself had been granted by God which enabled him to look into the tomb and to believe, whereas Mary Magdalene saw and feared, and Peter saw and was puzzled.   And here John tells us about the Apostle Thomas in order to humble himself and show us where the greatest privilege of all is to be gained: by believing without seeing, believing, that is, on the testimony of the Church.

People of God, if we wish to be part of God’s new creation, if we long for such a purification that we might be able to enter upon a life of eternal fulfilment in presence to and appreciation of divine beauty and truth, goodness and love, we should pray that we might ourselves be sanctified in truth by the Spirit of truth; that we might know and appreciate through faith God’s message of salvation --still proclaimed by Jesus in and through His Church -- ever more fully, and love it ever more deeply.  The only proof that we have indeed received the Holy Spirit into our hearts and are allowing Him to rule there, is the objective fact that we sincerely seek to overcome sin by the Christian discipline of expressing our faith through love.   As Saint John says:

 

            This is eternal life, the keeping of God’s commandments.

And those commandments are not difficult because God’s Holy Spirit has been given to us.  Therefore, let us open wide our hearts to receive anew the Holy Spirit of Easter peace, and then go from this blessed assembly of all-as-one to bear joyful, individual, witness to Jesus by lives of loving, Catholic, obedience.