6th Sunday of Easter Year A 2014

6^th. Sunday of Easter (A)

(Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1^st. 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

Fifth Sunday of Eastertide Year A 2014

Fifth Sunday of Eastertide (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 6:1-7; 1st. Letter of St. Peter 2:4-9; Gospel of St. John 14:1-12)

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With the Gospel passage we have just heard we are introduced into what might be called the ‘Holy of holies of the New Testament’.  These intimate words after the Last Supper which Jesus had so ‘eagerly desired to eat with His disciples’ contain what is, in effect, the last manifestation of His deeply sympathetic understanding of and Personal concern for those whom the Father had specially given to Him, and whom He had long cherished and come to love so dearly, before Himself being given up to death – a death He not only freely accepted but also most lovingly embraced, ‘entering willingly into His Passion’, as the second Eucharistic Prayer puts it. 

Jesus had already gathered the Apostles round Him for their Paschal meal in the course of which He told them – to His great distress and theirs – that one of them would betray Him; whereupon they were left anxiously wondering who it could be since Jesus did not publicly name Judas Iscariot.  The atmosphere in the room was depressed even tense, but Judas then went out -- apparently on a mission confided to him, but in fact into the night and for the powers of darkness -- whereupon the general sense of threat and despondency among the Apostles was lifted and they were free again to respond to Jesus’ words of exultation:

          Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. (John 13:31)

This stark transition from recent depression and foreboding to present joy and expectation affected Peter most of all, for when Jesus went on to say:  

My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come’,

Peter could not accept the thought of any such limitation to his zeal for and attachment to Jesus:

          Master, why can’t I follow You?  I will lay down my life for You!

Jesus therefore had to warn him that, despite his present feelings, he would soon deny Him three times.

Jesus, however, having just intoned ‘Gloria’ to God did not want to leave His disciples in any atmosphere of depression due to their own emotional instability, and so He hastened to sustain, strengthen, and confirm them in their Gospel faith by encouraging and advising them how to attain to that peace and joy which awaited them in heaven, however much the threatening clouds might gather around them here on earth and against Himself at this decisive moment:   

   

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in Me.  In My Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 

He says the same to His Catholic people today, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled!’  Difficulties will inevitably arise, for the devil is at work in the world, and in our own weak, sinfully-inclined hearts and minds; which, of course, also means, at work in His Church, and even, most sadly, among those specially consecrated to the glory of His Name.  Nonetheless, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled!’ Have faith in God (He is Lord and Master of all), have faith also in Me (for I have promised to be with you in My Church until the end of time).

People of God, it is a sign of true love for Jesus (‘true love’ because it may be totally unnoticed by men) when we refuse to allow our hearts to be weighed down, our minds absorbed in or worried by, the cares of this world.  Such trials will inevitably arise in our lives at times, but if we really want to trust God, if we truly aspire to love Jesus, we must not ‘let our hearts be troubled’ in such ways; for yielding ourselves to them, under whatever guise they may present themselves to us, ultimately promotes but one thing: deeper self-solicitude and hidden self-love. 

As Jesus continued speaking to His disciples, opening His Sacred Heart to them more and more, He added:

If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to Myself, so that where I am you also may be. 

How the Apostles longed to be with Jesus!!  How gladly they had given up everything in order to be with Him in His public ministry!  And here Jesus tells all who -- together with the Apostles -- long for that supreme blessedness of ‘being with Him’, that ultimately it cannot be achieved by our own efforts; we can only be truly and fully ‘one with Him’ by His coming to us and our allowing Him to take charge of our lives. 

          I will come back again and take you to Myself.

Not that Jesus will do everything, of course, because He has come down to us that we might rise to life in Him and learn to work with Him and by His Spirit for the Father’s glory and mankind’s salvation; and so He immediately calls on them to prepare themselves:

           Where I am going you know the way.

The way, that is, already proclaimed by the Good News of the Gospel, the way along which all those who believe in God must walk towards their Father’s heavenly home.  Let the Apostles prepare themselves to start immediately with both confidence and humility, sure in the knowledge that they will ultimately reach their destination if they walk in the company of Jesus.  That is why Jesus will return: to take them with Himself along the Way which is Himself.

To make that journey with Jesus, however, we still need guidance lest we stray away from the right path, and stamina lest we fail to hold fast to the end of the road.  And so it is as the eternal light of Truth and font of Life that Jesus offers His disciples such guidance and stamina, saying:

I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

At that moment Philip came up with a question that no doubt astonished his fellow Apostles -- how could Philip have asked such a question in their name and at such a time! -- and Jesus Himself:

          Master, show us the Father and that will be enough for us!

This both astonished Jesus and it hurt Him!

Have I been with you for so long a time, and you still do not know Me, Philip?  

That question, I say, hurt Jesus because it showed that Philip was not fully content to be with Jesus; it showed that he did not, as yet, really love Jesus enough, and consequently did not truly know Him either.  Philip, wanted certainty for himself, the relative certainty of sight rather than the obscurity of faith.  He wanted to be secure, safe at the destination; not always walking ’blind’ with Jesus, having to trust Jesus totally, and all along the way.  Philip was not yet content to be with Jesus in faith; he wanted what he thought was more, what was better: to see the Father with his own eyes.   How foolish!!  What eyes could better see the Father than Jesus eyes!

It was clear-- embarrassingly clear even to his fellow Apostles and, of course, painfully clear for Jesus – that He, Jesus, was not yet, Philip’s all; there was so much of Philip not yet given to Jesus, so much of Philip still wanting for Philip!

And how many of us, likewise, want to see results and get more for ourselves! We want to see ourselves – and perhaps we want to be seen by others -- doing things for God, things that show to others and prove to ourselves how much we deserve a place in heaven, rather than trusting in the goodness of God to give freely to all who love Him more than they could desire, rather than living a life of total FAITH in Jesus: seeking to know and love Him with all our hearts and in Him the Father, to the total disregard and forgetting of self.

People of God, let us look to Jesus ever more and more, let us learn of Him, love Him, live for Him … all this by trusting Him.

St. Francis is reported (Ivan Gobry) to have said, ‘The Order and the life of Friars Minor are like a little flock that the Son of God requested of His heavenly Father saying, “Father, I would like You to form and give Me a new and humble people, different from all those that have gone before … a people that will be content to possess Me alone.”’

         

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.