Homily for the 5th Sunday of EasterMay 2, 2010
Acts 14: 21-27
Boy Scouts Centennial Camporee
Acts 14: 21-27
Boy Scouts Centennial Camporee
Peekskill, N.Y.
This was the base text for my homily at Mass on Saturday evening, May 1, at the Westchester-Putnam Council of the BSA's centennial camporee. There were about 270 Scouts and Scouters present, out of 1,280 participating in the camporee. I adapted this text somewhat and abbreviated it considerably in view of the schedule and the lack of shade on a very warm day.
“Paul and Barnabas strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith” (Acts 14: 22).
All thru the Easter season—which lasts 7 weeks—we read from the Acts of the Apostles. Acts describes how the Good News of Jesus Christ spread from Jerusalem across the Roman Empire thru the courageous preaching of the apostles and the power of the Holy Spirit. A great deal of that power comes from the message expressed in our 2d reading today: “God’s dwelling is with the human race…. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away” (Rev 21:3-4).
This is a message of love and of hope. A message of love, because God dwells with us thru the incarnation of his Son Jesus Christ; i.e., the eternal Son of God became a human being 2,000 years ago, walked among us, taught us, made God’s love present; and ever since then has remained among us in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. A message of hope, because this God has called us to dwell with him forever in the life of the resurrection, like his Son Jesus Christ, who after suffering death like all of us rose from the dead—which is what we celebrate thruout this Easter season and, indeed, every single Sunday of the year because every Sunday is a “little Easter.”
Paul and Barnabas were chosen by God to bring this message of love and hope to many places in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, in places that we now call Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, and Greece. And while they won many converts to the one God and his Son Jesus Christ, they also ran into strong and violent opposition, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles. They were sometimes arrested, beaten, jailed, run out of town. At least once Paul was nearly stoned to death (with rocks, wise guys!). Besides that, they encountered all the difficulties of travel in the 1st century: walking hundreds of miles on good, mediocre, and bad roads; good, bad, and indifferent inns and camping along the road (without tents and Coleman stoves); the danger of robbers and wild animals (wilder than turkeys and deer); storms on land and at sea; shipwreck; and more.
The apostles—not only Paul and Barnabas but all of them—risked all those dangers and that persecution because they were in love with Jesus and wanted everyone to know of God’s love for every person, brought to us in the teaching of Jesus and in his cross and resurrection. With this message “they strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith.”
“Paul and Barnabas strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith” (Acts 14: 22).
All thru the Easter season—which lasts 7 weeks—we read from the Acts of the Apostles. Acts describes how the Good News of Jesus Christ spread from Jerusalem across the Roman Empire thru the courageous preaching of the apostles and the power of the Holy Spirit. A great deal of that power comes from the message expressed in our 2d reading today: “God’s dwelling is with the human race…. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away” (Rev 21:3-4).
This is a message of love and of hope. A message of love, because God dwells with us thru the incarnation of his Son Jesus Christ; i.e., the eternal Son of God became a human being 2,000 years ago, walked among us, taught us, made God’s love present; and ever since then has remained among us in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. A message of hope, because this God has called us to dwell with him forever in the life of the resurrection, like his Son Jesus Christ, who after suffering death like all of us rose from the dead—which is what we celebrate thruout this Easter season and, indeed, every single Sunday of the year because every Sunday is a “little Easter.”
Paul and Barnabas were chosen by God to bring this message of love and hope to many places in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, in places that we now call Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, and Greece. And while they won many converts to the one God and his Son Jesus Christ, they also ran into strong and violent opposition, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles. They were sometimes arrested, beaten, jailed, run out of town. At least once Paul was nearly stoned to death (with rocks, wise guys!). Besides that, they encountered all the difficulties of travel in the 1st century: walking hundreds of miles on good, mediocre, and bad roads; good, bad, and indifferent inns and camping along the road (without tents and Coleman stoves); the danger of robbers and wild animals (wilder than turkeys and deer); storms on land and at sea; shipwreck; and more.
The apostles—not only Paul and Barnabas but all of them—risked all those dangers and that persecution because they were in love with Jesus and wanted everyone to know of God’s love for every person, brought to us in the teaching of Jesus and in his cross and resurrection. With this message “they strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith.”
St. Paul preaching--one of a series of paintings of the Apostle's life in the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome.
Paul and Barnabas also reminded the disciples in all these different cities and countries that Christians must “undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (14:22). In that verse, the apostles echo Jesus’ words to his disciples in one of his appearances after he rose from the dead: “Wasn’t it necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter his glory?” (Luke 24:26). Jesus tells us that disciples must be like their masters (cf. John 15:20), which means that we too will face challenges, difficulties, hardships sometimes because we follow a Savior who was persecuted, tortured, and crucified.
Last Wednesday I was speaking with a former student of mine, a man now about 50 years old who has been hospitalized with some serious medical issues. He’s been a good Catholic all his life. But he admitted to me that he’s scared. His health problems seem only to be getting worse. He could die.
Something like that could scare any of us. True, he’s not suffering because he’s a follower of Jesus. But it can help us to remember that Jesus, too, was scared of suffering and death, as he showed us in the Garden of Gethsemane just before he was arrested. Jesus, too, felt abandoned by God, as he showed when he cried out on the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). We all need our spirits strengthened with reminders that Christ remains with us, that God loves us, that God takes care of us long term—really, really long term, because he’s going to raise us from the dead and we’re going to live forever with him without any further pain, suffering, or tears, like Jesus himself, like the Virgin Mary, who has already been raised up and taken to heaven (our Catholic doctrine of the Assumption).
There are other hardships that we have to undergo as disciples of Jesus. Being faithful to Jesus means keeping his commandments. The gospel today speaks of the commandment to love one another (John 13:34-35). The 10 Commandments are practical applications of how we love God (the 1st 3 commands) and one another (the other 7 commands). The Scout Law also is the practice of love for God and one another.
There are a lot of people in our world who don’t believe in loving one another, people who practice hatred, vengeance, racism, sexism, jihad or holy war. It takes courage to stand for the dignity of every person and to forgive those who hurt us.
There are people who think the only rule of life is to look out for No. 1, and it’s OK, even necessary, to hurt other people if they get in your way, if they become inconvenient. That’s organized crime; that’s drug warfare, such as we see so much of in the news these days in Mexico; that’s abortion. It takes courage to respect human life and treat everyone with respect.
There are people who don’t believe in purity, in chastity, in cleanliness of mind and heart. They use other people as means for their own pleasure thru pornography and thru sex outside of marriage. It takes courage to resist our culture that doesn’t see sex as a gift from God for the giving of oneself to another person and sharing one’s life with another, turning sex into selfishness.
There are people who think it’s good to take advantage of others as long as you don’t get caught, as long as you make money. “Greed is good,” a famous movie character said. We’re not so happy when greedy politicians and businessmen ruin our government and our economy, however. It takes courage always to be honest and truthful.
Those are some examples of the hardships we might have to undergo to enter the kingdom of God: to persevere as disciples of Jesus Christ by living truth, honesty, chastity, forgiveness, respect for
everyone. Not to mention being patient with your little brothers and sisters, doing your homework and your chores, obeying your parents, and not littering your campsite! But there’s a great deal of joy and satisfaction in doing our best to live like Jesus, in letting other people know that we’re his disciples—not by our words so much as by our actions, by the real, practical love that we have for one another.
Statue of St. Paul in the cloister of his basilica (built over his tomb) in Rome.
Last Wednesday I was speaking with a former student of mine, a man now about 50 years old who has been hospitalized with some serious medical issues. He’s been a good Catholic all his life. But he admitted to me that he’s scared. His health problems seem only to be getting worse. He could die.
Something like that could scare any of us. True, he’s not suffering because he’s a follower of Jesus. But it can help us to remember that Jesus, too, was scared of suffering and death, as he showed us in the Garden of Gethsemane just before he was arrested. Jesus, too, felt abandoned by God, as he showed when he cried out on the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). We all need our spirits strengthened with reminders that Christ remains with us, that God loves us, that God takes care of us long term—really, really long term, because he’s going to raise us from the dead and we’re going to live forever with him without any further pain, suffering, or tears, like Jesus himself, like the Virgin Mary, who has already been raised up and taken to heaven (our Catholic doctrine of the Assumption).
There are other hardships that we have to undergo as disciples of Jesus. Being faithful to Jesus means keeping his commandments. The gospel today speaks of the commandment to love one another (John 13:34-35). The 10 Commandments are practical applications of how we love God (the 1st 3 commands) and one another (the other 7 commands). The Scout Law also is the practice of love for God and one another.
There are a lot of people in our world who don’t believe in loving one another, people who practice hatred, vengeance, racism, sexism, jihad or holy war. It takes courage to stand for the dignity of every person and to forgive those who hurt us.
There are people who think the only rule of life is to look out for No. 1, and it’s OK, even necessary, to hurt other people if they get in your way, if they become inconvenient. That’s organized crime; that’s drug warfare, such as we see so much of in the news these days in Mexico; that’s abortion. It takes courage to respect human life and treat everyone with respect.
There are people who don’t believe in purity, in chastity, in cleanliness of mind and heart. They use other people as means for their own pleasure thru pornography and thru sex outside of marriage. It takes courage to resist our culture that doesn’t see sex as a gift from God for the giving of oneself to another person and sharing one’s life with another, turning sex into selfishness.
There are people who think it’s good to take advantage of others as long as you don’t get caught, as long as you make money. “Greed is good,” a famous movie character said. We’re not so happy when greedy politicians and businessmen ruin our government and our economy, however. It takes courage always to be honest and truthful.
Those are some examples of the hardships we might have to undergo to enter the kingdom of God: to persevere as disciples of Jesus Christ by living truth, honesty, chastity, forgiveness, respect for
everyone. Not to mention being patient with your little brothers and sisters, doing your homework and your chores, obeying your parents, and not littering your campsite! But there’s a great deal of joy and satisfaction in doing our best to live like Jesus, in letting other people know that we’re his disciples—not by our words so much as by our actions, by the real, practical love that we have for one another.
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