The Universal Church celebrates Sunday, May 19, 2019, as the fifth Sunday of Easter – Year C. In the entrance antiphon we pray: ‘O sing a new song to the Lord, for he has worked wonders; in the sight of the nations he has shown his deliverance. Amen. Alleluia.’
We find strength and encouragement in the beautiful readings of the Eastertide. The first reading reminds us that the Church’s progress was not without hardship. Paul and Barnabas, whom the Holy Spirit had put apart for a special mission, now return to Antioch to report back on the mission God has achieved through them. Despite the opposition and even outright persecution of the disciples, the word of God still finds new access and wins new converts to the faith. In the second reading, from the book of Revelation, John sees in a vision the new Jerusalem, where the community of those saved are enjoying peace and happiness in the company of the glorious Lord. In the Gospel, Saint John begins the discourse of the Last Supper, the most sublime of all the discourses in his Gospel. Jesus is now telling his Apostles what Calvary means and how the Father is to glorify him who is obedient even unto death. Then he gives them his great commandment of love: ‘Love one another as I have loved you,’ a commandment we should all make ours today.
First Reading: Acts of the Apostles 14:21-27.
Paul and Barnabas went back through Lystra and Iconium to Antioch. They put fresh heart into the disciples, encouraging them to persevere in the faith. ‘We all have to experience many hardships,’ they said ‘before we enter the kingdom of God.’ In each of these churches they appointed elders, and with prayer and fasting they commended them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe. They passed through Pisidia and reached Pamphylia. Then after proclaiming the word at Perga, they went down to Attalia and from there sailed for Antioch, where they had originally been commended to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. On their arrival they assembled the church and gave an account of all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith to the pagans.
V/ The word of the Lord.
R/ Thanks be to God.
Comment
This reading reminds us of the many difficulties the early Christian communities faced, especially persecution from Jews and non-Jews alike. The word of God did record progress and success but its preachers, like Paul and Barnabas, encountered considerable opposition and even physical violence and persecution. But Paul was not one to back away from difficulties of any sort, even if it involved persecution and physical suffering. He knew that suffering was just a prelude to abundant spiritual fruit. Saint Jose Maria Escriva de Ballaguer, the founder of the Opus Dei, says that “Each one of us has at some time or other experienced that serving Christ our Lord involves suffering and hardship; to deny this would imply that we had not yet found God [..]. Far from discouraging us, the difficulties we meet have to spur us to mature as Christians. This fight sanctifies us and gives effectiveness to our apostolic endeavours” (Friends of God, 28).
For the easy administration of the Church, Paul and Barnabas, through a liturgical rite of ordination, invest the elders with the ministry of governance and religious worship. “The ministry of priests,” the Fathers of Vatican II tell us, “shares in the authority by which Christ himself builds up and sanctifies and rules his Body” (Presbyterorum ordinis, 2). The ministerial office of priests is essential to the life of every Christian community, which draws its strength from the Word of God and the sacraments. Paul and Barnabas therefore laid a solid foundation for the priesthood by ordaining elders to continue their ministry of proclaiming the word of Christ.
Last Sunday, we prayed for more vocations to the priesthood. “Our vocation,” Saint John Paul II once told a huge gathering of priests in Philadelphia, USA, “is a gift from the Lord Jesus himself. It is a personal, individual calling: we have been called by our name, just as Jeremiah was” (Homily at the Civic Center, October 4, 1979). Reminding priests of their special duty to be witnesses to God in the modern world, Saint John Paul II invited priests not only to bear in mind the Christian people, from whom they come and whom they must serve, but also people at large; they should not hide the fact that they are priests. “Do not help the trends towards ‘taking God off the streets’ by the modes of dress you adopt and by behaviour” (Address at Maynooth University, October 1, 1979).
For his part, Pope Francis emphasises the role of the Christian community as the home and family where vocations are born. In his message for this year’s Vocations Sunday, he says that “Missionaries are accompanied and sustained by the Christian community” and candidates for vocations gratefully contemplate this mediation of the community as an essential element for their future. He also points to the Church as the birthplace of vocations, the place where vocations grow and are sustained.
Missionaries must therefore follow the example of Paul and Barnabas who, despite the animosity and persecution they experienced in Antioch, still returned there to continue preaching the Gospel. They were determined to complete arrangements for the government of the new churches and to consolidate the faith of the disciples and they allowed nothing, even physical violence and persecution, to deter them from their mission. With Christ as their shield, nothing else mattered to them.
What a great lesson for us. More often than not, we are tempted to shy away from openly expressing our Christian faith for fear of being ridiculed or even physically attacked. But by following Christ, we cannot avoid the cross. We must carry ours and pray that God should strengthen our faith so that we will undergo whatever hardship may come our way in the name of the Lord with joy and happiness. We pray too that God should strengthen the faith of our priests so that, like Paul and Barnabas, they too should have the courage to proclaim God’s word, in season and out of season, wherever they may be. Amen. Alleluia.
Second Reading: Apocalypse 21: 1-5.
I, John, saw a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had disappeared now, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, and the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, as beautiful as a bride all dressed for her husband. Then I heard a loud voice call from the throne, ‘You see this city? Here God lives among men. He will make his home among them; they shall be his people, and he will be their God; his name is God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone.’ Then the One sitting on the throne spoke: ‘Now I am making the whole of creation of new.’
V/ The word of the Lord.
R/ Thanks be to God.
Comment
In previous visions, John talked much about the forces of evil, including death. Now that the risen Lord has conquered all these forces of evil, we now see the establishment of the Kingdom of God in all its fullness. The description of the new creation brings the book to its climax. Evil is destroyed, the earth of sorrow and pain has ceased to exist and the violent powers associated with the sea are no more. The city, which received the promise of God and witnessed the sacrifice of his Son, becomes the symbol of the Church Triumphant, that is, the Church in heaven. It is towards this Church that we are all going.
The new Jerusalem is portrayed as the Bride of the Lamb, a wonderful city of great beauty ruled over by God the Father and Christ, the risen One. God has created new heavens and a new earth, a new Jerusalem full of joy, where the sound of weeping would never be heard again, where God would make himself plain for all to see and where everything would be as it was in paradise before sin. Those who will inhabit this new world (symbolized by the Holy City, the new Jerusalem) are the entire assembly of the saved, the entire people of God, a holy people disposed to live in loving communion with God. God will see to it that none of the evil, suffering or pain found in this world ever finds its way into the new world.
This passage strengthens the faith and hope of the Church – not only of Saint John’s generation but of all generations down to our day. The world as we know it, distorted by sin, is passing away and God is preparing a new dwelling, the heavenly Jerusalem, for his righteous ones. As the Fathers of the Church say: “Then with death conquered, the children of God will be raised in Christ and what was sown in weakness and dishonor will put on the imperishable: charity and its works will remain, and all of creation, which God made for man, will be set free from its bondage to decay” (Gaudium et spes, 39).
Let us pray for the courage and strength to avoid sin and evil, to intensify love for one another so that we too may gain a place in the new Jerusalem when our time on earth runs out. Amen. Alleluia.
Gospel acclamation: “I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you, says the Lord. Alleluia!”
Gospel: John 13: 31-35
When Judas had gone Jesus said: ‘Now has the Son of Man been glorified, and in him God has been glorified. If God has been glorified in him, God will in turn glorify him in himself, and will glorify him very soon. My little children, I shall not be with you much longer. I give you a new commandment: love one another; just as I have loved you, you also must love one another. By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples.’
V/ The Gospel of the Lord.
R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Comment
With the words of today’s Gospel, Jesus begins the discourse of the Last Supper, the most sublime of all the discourses in Saint John’s Gospel. It is also the favourite discourse that the Church selects for meditation during the Paschal season when we rejoice in the risen Lord.
Jesus is at his last hour and is about to be glorified. This is the glorification he will receive when he is raised up on the cross. Saint John stresses that Christ’s death is the beginning of his victory, his crucifixion being the first step in his ascension to his Father. At the same time, it is the glorification of the Father himself because Christ voluntarily accepts death out of love for us as a supreme act of obedience to the will of his Father. The Father will respond to the glorification which Christ offers him by glorifying Christ as Son of man, that is, in his holy human nature, through his resurrection and ascension to God’s right hand. Thus, the glory which the Son gives the Father is at the same time glory for the Son.
Christ begins this discourse of the Last Supper by proclaiming his new commandment: “love one another as I have loved you.” He will repeat this commandment a number of times during his Last Supper discourse and Saint John, in his First Letter, will insist on the need to not only proclaim this commandment of love but to put it into practice (1 Jn 2:8; 3:7-21).
Love of neighbor is not anything new. It was already called for in the Old Testament (Lev 19:18) but Jesus adds to the command of brotherly love his own love for us: “even as I have loved you”. He ratifies it by stating that it is similar to the first commandment which is to love God with all our heart, soul and mind. But Jesus does not only call on us to love one another, he insists that we extend our love to cover our enemies as well, by returning good for evil. He puts these words in the mouth of the evangelist Matthew: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Mt 5: 43-44).
Love of neighbor cannot be separated from love of God. Christ gives great importance to the love of one’s neighbor because, as Saint John was to write some years later, “If one says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen’” (1 Jn 4:20). And what you do to the least of these little ones, Christ himself said, you do it unto him, the Lord (Mt. 25:40).
Jesus’ love for us is real. When he was on earth, he shocked many of those who thought themselves righteous by associating with the poor and even eating with sinners and publicans, the sick who needed the doctor of life most (Mt 9:11). He came to restore us to the love of the Father and reconcile us with him.
The words “love one another” and “love your neighbour as yourself” are definitely addressed to you and me, living in the city of Douala today. Love must be the rule of our community. If we Christians were to make love the hallmark of our Christian life, everyone, non-Christians alike, would admire us. Mahatma Ghandhi, the father of the Indian independence, is quoted as saying that he loved Christianity but hated Christians because Christians are hypocrites who do not practice what they preach. “You Christians, especially missionaries,” Ghandi said, “should begin to live more like Christ. You should spread more of the gospel of love and you should study non-Christian faiths to have a more sympathetic understanding of their faiths” (Quoted in S. K. George in Gandhiji-his life and work, 1944).
Christians should therefore radiate the love of Christ that binds us to him and to one another. The more we carry out the law of love for Christ and for our neighbour, irrespective of our neighbour’s religious convictions and beliefs, the more we become like Christ and the more authentic will be our Christian life. We pray, in the words of the Chilean communist poet, Pablo Neruda, for the courage to open wide our hands and spread grapes of love in the wind for humanity. Amen. Alleluia.
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