Homily for 6th Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
6th Sunday of Easter

May 25, 2025
John 14: 23-29
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

“Jesus said to his disciples:  ‘Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him’” (John 14:23).

Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit made their dwelling with each of us when we were baptized.  St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God?” (I, 6:19).  Confirmation deepened that indwelling.  Christ’s dwelling in us is renewed in the Eucharist, thru which we both worship and consume his body and blood; we become incorporate with him.

Jesus tells us that we express our love for him by keeping his word.  We find his word in the Holy Scriptures.  So we must read, reflect on, and become familiar with the Scriptures; not just read them but absorb them so that they sink into our hearts.

That’s why the 2d Vatican Council—60 years ago already—put a lot of emphasis on the Scriptures, including an expansion in the amount of the Bible that we read in church—at Mass and the other sacraments.

St. Jerome is often quoted:  “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”     But hearing God’s word read in church is hardly sufficient for knowing and keeping Jesus’ word.  We have to take up the Scriptures also at home.  Reading and reflecting on the Scriptures ought to be a part of every Christian’s daily life.  If your Bible at home is collecting dust, you’re missing something.  Jesus wants to speak to you every day.  He wants to be part of your family life, your work life, your leisure life, and not only of your Sunday morning.  He and the Father want to dwell with you.

Jesus speaks further—he’s talking to the apostles at the Last Supper—about his Father’s sending the Holy Spirit to them to teach them everything and remind them of all that he told them (cf. 14:26).  The Holy Spirit did part of that work by inspiring the apostles and other early disciples to compose the Sacred Scriptures—writing down Christ’s teachings so that we’d always have them.

The Holy Spirit continues to teach us and remind us of what Jesus taught by inspiring the Church.  In the 1st reading, the apostles and elders reached a decision about receiving Gentiles into the Church.  The Holy Spirit inspired their decision:  “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us,” they wrote, about how the “brothers and sisters in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia” (Acts 15:23) and all the non-Jewish people of the Roman world, should join with Jewish believers in Christ.  You can read in ch. 15 of the Acts of the Apostles the full debate that went on about that.

After ample debate, the leaders of the Church ruled that the Gentiles wouldn’t have to become Jews and adopt Jewish rituals; but everyone would have to put aside anything linked to the pagan gods and would have to adhere to certain moral practices, especially those regarding the sacredness of life and sexual morality:  “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us….”

“Whoever loves me will keep my word.”  Jesus’ word, then, is conveyed to us by the Holy Spirit thru the apostles and thru the Church, founded on the 12 apostles of the Lamb, as we heard in the 2d reading (Rev 21:14).  We call the Church “apostolic” because it’s faithful to what Jesus’ apostles have passed on to us.

The Mission of the Apostles
(Tommaso Minardi, Quirinale Palace)

If we want to keep Jesus’ word today, we listen to what the Holy Spirit teaches us thru both the Scriptures and the Church—the Church teaching thru the Pope and the bishops, not just whatever pops up on the Internet; teaching not only that Jesus is the Son of God, that he rose from the dead, that he offers us God’s grace, but also about the sacraments, about keeping the Lord’s day holy, about human dignity, human rights, and human life, about sexual morality, about care for God’s created world, about loving our enemies, about bringing our Christian faith to bear on the world we live in.  Our personal preferences and opinions don’t trump the Holy Spirit, who teaches us everything and reminds us of all that Jesus tells us.  “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”