Homily for the
7th Sunday of
Easter
May 12, 2024
John 17: 11-19
Acts 1: 15-26
Villa Maria,
Bronx [with modifications]
Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis
Xavier, Bronx
“They do not belong to the world any more
than I belong to the world” (John 17: 14, 16).
In his prayer to the Father, Jesus prays
that line twice, then speaks twice about his followers’ being “consecrated in
the truth” (17:17,19). It’s for the
truth that he’s sending his apostles into the world, and he identifies the
truth as the word of God (17:17-18). He
prays that they, and all of us who are his followers, be “kept in [the
Father’s] name,” be kept in union with one another and with the Holy Trinity (17:11),
and be protected from the world’s destructiveness and from the Evil One (cf.
17:12,15).
The Mission of the Apostles (Tommaso Minardi)
The world into which Jesus sends the
apostles is in the power of the Evil One (Luke 4:6; Rev 13:2) and there is hostile
to him and to them. He sends them, as
Peter tells the 120 disciples assembled in the upper room, to be witnesses to
Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 1:22). That’s
the fundamental truth that God’s word speaks to the world.
It’s not a truth that the world is eager to
hear. If God the Father raised Jesus
from the dead, then Jesus’ teachings must be listened to: all that he preached and demonstrated “the
whole time that he came and went among us, beginning from the baptism of John
until the day on which he was taken up from us” (1:21-22).
The world into which Jesus sends us is more
familiar, and perhaps much more comfortable, with lies and deceptions. Those may range from the propositions of the Flat Earth Society to people who
argue that NASA faked the moon landings to conspiracy
theorists who debunk the death of Elvis, the Newtown school shooting, etc. We’re pretty sure that hackers spread
disinformation all over the Internet, and we’ve all heard the one-liner that
you know a politician is lying when his lips are moving.
Advertisers want us to believe that the
right toothpaste or shampoo enhances our personality, that happiness depends on
grabbing all the gusto we can, that the right vehicle will set us free.
More seriously, the world argues that we create our own truth. Justice Anthony Kennedy put it this way in a Supreme Court decision: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”[1] So every individual has the right to define his own existence and the meaning of the universe. The Greeks called that attitude hubris, the Yiddish call it chutzpah, and in plain English it’s arrogance.
Can what’s true for me be false for you, and vice versa? Maybe human beings are degrading the planet, or maybe they’re not? Maybe Ukrainians are really Russians even if they don’t think so? Maybe everyone is created as an image of God, and maybe not? Maybe the Son of God became a human being to redeem everyone, or maybe he didn’t?
If we accept that the
word of God revealed by Jesus is truth; if we believe that our Baptism has
consecrated us to God thru Jesus Christ—then we have to confront the falsehoods
that the world preaches to us about who has value as a human being, about the
meaning of our human sexuality, about the purpose of politics, and about the
ultimate purpose of our lives.
St. John writes: “We have come to know and to believe in the
love God has for us. God is love, and
whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him” (1 John 4:16). That’s the truth made personal by Jesus
Christ, risen from the dead, who “has given us of his Spirit” (4:13), who is present
to us here and now “in the unity of the Holy Spirit,” in our union with him
thru the sacred liturgy, thru our attention to his word, thru our pursuit of
truth.
In the final prayer of
the Mass, we’ll pray that “what has already come to pass in Christ [our] Head
will be accomplished in the body of the whole Church” (Postcommunion); that all
of us will come to eternal life because the Father has kept us one with himself
and with his Son, consecrated us for himself. 
Ascension of Jesus (Gebhard Fugel)
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