Homily for 6th Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
6th Sunday of Easter

May 5, 2024
John 15: 9-17
Villa Maria, Bronx                       
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Assumption, Bronx

More, by Holbein

When Sir Thomas More’s son-in-law complimented him in 1525 on his friendship with Henry VIII, More replied with foresight, “I believe he favors me more than any other subject in England…. However, … if my head could win him a castle in France, it should not fail to go.”  More’s faithfulness to his conscience, the sanctity of marriage, and the unity of the Church did cost him his head 10 years later.

When Pontius Pilate was trying to save Jesus from the chief priests and Sanhedrin, they threatened him by telling him, “If you release him, you are not a friend of Caesar” (John 19:12).  They’d accuse him to the emperor in Rome of tolerating a threat to Roman rule, and Tiberias Caesar wouldn’t take kindly to that, any more than Henry VIII took to Thomas More’s Christian principles.

Christ before Pilate (Mihaly Munkacsy)

The friendship of powerful persons may be fickle.  It may depend on how useful we might be to them.  That’s true also of some of our ordinary relationships, unfortunately.

But it’s not true of Jesus.  Knowing, as he did, who was about to betray him, who would soon deny even knowing him, who would run away and hide when he was arrested, he nevertheless called his disciples friends—friends he’d personally chosen, friends to whom he’d revealed everything he’d heard from his Father, friends for whom he’d lay down his life (John 15:13-16).

Those assurances of Jesus at the Last Supper are addressed to all of us.  From eternity the Son of God has chosen us to be his friends, not slaves.  He doesn’t use us for his own purposes but dies for us in order that he might raise us up to eternal life alongside himself.  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down his life for his friends” (15:13).

Bp. Robert Barron has written that “a true friend is someone who has seen us at our worst and still loves us … when I am most obnoxious, most self-absorbed, most afraid and unpleasant.”  He observes that we sinners “murdered the Lord of life, and he answered us not with hatred but with compassion.”*  That’s Jesus’ love for Simon Peter and the rest of the 12.  The only one who lost out was Judas, who rejected Jesus’ friendship, still offered even as the traitor kissed him, and Jesus addressed him as “friend” (Matt 26:50).

In spite of our sins, Jesus still addresses us as his friends and invites us to dine with him in the Eucharistic banquet and in the eternal banquet of heaven.  He asks only that we accept his friendship and extend his friendship to everyone in our lives:  “Love one another as I love you.   You are my friends if you do what I command you:  love one another” (15:12,14,17).  Then, in his love and friendship our joy will be complete (15:11) forever.

Last Supper (Dagnan-Bouveret)

* “I Have Called You Friends,” The Word on Fire Bible: The Gospels (Park Ridge, Ill., 2020), p. 552.