Homily for 5th Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
5th Sunday of Easter

May 19, 2019

John 13: 31-35
Rev 21: 1-5
Acts 14: 21-27
Nativity, Washington, D.C.                                                          

“I give you a new commandment:  love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13: 34).

Last Supper

At the Last Supper Jesus gave his disciples the new commandment of love.  It’s no ivory tower commandment like so many social and political ideas put forward by professors, Hollywood personalities, and politicians who seem never to have lived in the real world.  It is, instead, a commandment based on the example that Jesus gave us in his public ministry, exhausting himself to teach and to heal people, and at this same Last Supper when he washed the feet of the apostles, and on Good Friday when he offered his life in atonement for our sins.

In other words, Jesus’ love isn’t a warm-fuzzy love, a feel-good love, some sort of sentimentality.  It’s a sacrificial love, a love that leads him to offer himself to us, and to his Father on our behalf.  This is the love that he commands us to show for one another.

This is also the love that perfects the image of God in us.  So Jesus tells the disciples that “God is glorified in him” (13:31); he reflects the Father’s love in his own life and so gives glory to God.  And, he is confident, “God will also glorify him in himself” and do that “at once,” quickly, immediately (13:32), because the cross will open for him the life of the resurrection, and God will glorify even his human nature; and thru his glorified human nature, God will open the path to heavenly glory for us too if we imitate Christ in his sacrificial love.

The Book of Revelation gives us a prophetic vision of the heavenly glory that’s the destiny of those who follow Jesus:  “God’s dwelling is with the human race” in “the holy city, a new Jerusalem,” adorned (or glorified) like a bride for her husband, where there will “be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain,” for God will make all things new.  The new Jerusalem is the new creation, a wholly renewed universe for all those who follow the Lamb of God (Rev 21:1-5); a garden of Eden without forbidden fruit, but with only the pleasure of walking always with God and the saints.

What does it mean, in practice, to love one another in a sacrificial manner?  The 1st reading shows us how Paul and Barnabas did that in the middle of the 1st century.  They hiked around the country that we now call Turkey, preaching the Gospel in one town after another and meeting a lot of opposition and persecution as they did so.  They followed up by returning to their converts to “strengthen their spirits and exhort them to persevere in the faith” even as they live with “many hardships” (Acts 14:21-22), like Jesus himself.  True love doesn’t just leave people but follows up with them and tries to remain close to them.

Paul preaching

(Painting in Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome)

Furthermore, Paul and Barnabas didn’t hide their faith but made it known, as their Christian communities had to do and as we also must do at least by the example of our lives and by our willingness to speak of it when it’s appropriate to do so.  And we must be people who encourage and strengthen others with our friendship, words of comfort and healing.  We must offer to the Lord the hardships, pain, disappointments, and hurts that we experience and try, by our own patience and kindness, not to cause pain, disappointment, or hurt to others, starting with our own families, the members of Nativity Parish, the people we work with, our next-door neighbors.

Paul and Barnabas “appointed elders in each church” (14:23), i.e., they left leaders to maintain the apostolic teaching and to celebrate the Eucharist.  In your families, you are the elders who are charged to teach the faith to the youngsters, to teach them to pray, to encourage them to come to Mass—to this personal encounter with the Risen Lord Jesus in the sacrament of his body and blood.  You also need to pray for priests and bishops who maintain the apostolic teaching and celebrate the Eucharist, and pray for vocations for the Church so that the apostolic ministry may continue.  Welcome, encourage, and pray for Fr. Ebuka, who will be ordained in a few weeks; and not only on his ordination day but give him your support afterward too.

Finally, Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch, to the Church that had commissioned them for their missionary journey.  They weren’t freelance missionaries.  They had to give an account of their work—perhaps including an expense account?—“reporting what God had done with them” (14:27).  Those who serve God’s Church have to be accountable, and the Church has to hold them accountable—a lesson that the Church today is struggling to re-learn. 

Pope Francis gave us an example of accountability on May 10 while addressing the superiors general of women religious in Rome.  The Pope set up a commission 2 years ago to study the question of women deacons, historically and theologically; they submitted their inconclusive report a couple of months ago.  Pope Francis said the question required more study by the commission, and consideration in the light of Divine Revelation, of the Word of God.  Even the Pope is accountable!  He’s accountable to the Word of God, as are all of us.

Being faithful to one’s commission, to one’s responsibilities in the Church, is a concrete expression of the commandment to love one another.  The Church is certainly hurting today because some leaders haven’t been faithful (not that this is anything new, really, except in how widely known it is), and this infidelity also impedes the preaching of the Gospel because it makes Christ’s message less credible.  How often when a priest or bishop tries to present the Gospel message about human life, human dignity, or God’s plan for human sexuality, he and his message are rejected out of hand because of the failures of some Church leaders to live that Gospel message themselves.

So, brothers and sisters, hold us accountable.  We will make mistakes and even commit sins, “vessels of clay” or “earthen vessels” that we are (to use one of Paul’s phrases, 2 Cor 4:7).  In all kindness, like Paul and Barnabas exhort us “to persevere in the faith” and in our apostolic ministry, and pray for us, that we might truly love you as Christ loves us all.

May 19 is the anniversary of my own priestly ordination, 41 years ago, and I commend myself to your prayers.  Without the prayers of God’s people, no priest would easily persevere in is union with Christ, the one, great priest of God, and our ministry would be next to useless.  Thank you, and God bless you!