The Universal Church celebrates Sunday, May 12, 2024, as the Seventh Sunday of Easter – Year B. In the entrance antiphon, we pray: “O Lord, hear my voice, for I have called to you; my heart has spoken: Seek his face; hide not your face from me, alleluia.”
The themes of unity and love are predominant in the passages of this day’s reflection in anticipation of the founding of the Church at Pentecost. In the first reading, the Apostles are determined to fulfill our Lord’s wish to have a group of twelve men to form the nucleus of his new community, on the model of the twelve tribes of Israel. That is why Peter is so anxious to replace Judas, the traitor, and restore the number of twelve. With the election of Matthias, the College of Twelve is now complete. The second reading, from First John, is the final reading from the Epistle of the Love of God which takes us into the heart of the Trinity itself. In it, Saint John tells us that to live a life of love means that we have a share in God’s Spirit. The Priestly Prayer, in Saint John’s Gospel message, shows Christ asking his Father to bless and consolidate especially the ministry of his disciples who will be taking his message of salvation, with all that it entails, to the entire universe. This prayer also tells the whole meaning of Christ’s life and consecrates him for the sacrifice of his Hour. In the course of this Eucharist, let us pray for the grace to love God and to love our neighbor so that we too will be consecrated and fortified in our faith as we, in turn, carry Christ’s message of salvation, first of all, into our individual families, then into the society we live in.
First Reading: Acts of the Apostles 1:15-17; 20-26.
Peter stood up in the midst of the brothers —there was a group of about one hundred and twenty persons in the one place. He said, “My brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand through the mouth of David, concerning Judas, who was the guide for those who arrested Jesus. He was numbered among us and was allotted a share in this ministry. “For it is written in the Book of Psalms: May another take his office. “Therefore, it is necessary that one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day on which he was taken up from us, become with us a witness to his resurrection.” So they proposed two, Judas called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this apostolic ministry from which Judas turned away to go to his own place.” Then they gave lots to them, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was counted with the eleven apostles.
Comments
The Gospels tell us that our Lord desired to have a group of twelve men to form the nucleus of his new community, on the model of the twelve tribes of Israel. The one hundred and twenty persons Saint Luke mentions in this reading are those waiting in the Upper Room to be endowed with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Fortified by the Holy Spirit, they can then begin their mission of taking our Lord’s word from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. For this work, they will need the correct number of officers, that is, twelve to guide them. That is why Peter is so anxious to replace Judas, the traitor, to make up this number.
He then gives the criterion for membership of this group of Twelve. To secure the absolute authenticity of the Church to be formed, the early group had to have as their leaders those men who had been with Jesus from the very beginning of his public life, and had seen the risen Lord and had been appointed witness of his resurrection.
We see Peter playing his role as the leader to whom Christ had entrusted his flock before ascending to his glory. After testing and ascertaining Peter’s commitment to him, Christ asks him to feed his lambs, tend his sheep, and feed his sheep (Jn 21: 16-17). With these words, among the last he spoke to his Apostle Peter, Christ entrusts to him the supreme role of governing his Church. His is a ministry of service – he is the servus servorum Dei, the servant of the servants of God. He will carry out this ministry in solidarity with his brothers in the Apostolate and in close contact with the whole Church represented here by the one hundred and twenty brethren around him. Saint John Chrysostom says that Peter’s “entire behavior shows the degree of his authority and that he understood the apostolic office of government not as a position of honor but as a commitment to watch over the spiritual health of those under him” (Homily on Acts, 3).
The Apostles are the witnesses of Christ’s public life and of his resurrection. They certify that Jesus of Nazareth who went about doing good and curing and raising people from the dead and the risen Lord are indeed one and the same person. Therefore the Church they form after the coming of the Holy Spirit attests that the words and actions of Jesus Christ are indeed truly reported.
In this passage, the community leaves the choice of who to fill the empty apostolic seat to God. They cast lots because they consider that God has already chosen a candidate for the empty seat and all that remains is for him to make his will known. With the choice of Matthias, the number Twelve is complete again and the Apostolic College is now ready to welcome the Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised to send. The College of the Twelve Apostles, whose head is Peter, endures to this day in the Episcopacy of the Church, whose head is the Pope, the bishop of Rome, successor of Peter, and vicar of Jesus Christ.
As we too await the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, let’s say this prayer for our Holy Father, Pope Francis: “Let us pray. Lord, source of eternal life and truth, give to Your shepherd, Pope Francis, a spirit of courage and right judgement, a spirit of knowledge and love. By governing with fidelity those entrusted to his care may he, as successor to the apostle Peter and vicar of Christ, build Your church into a sacrament of unity, love, and peace for all the world. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. Alleluia.
Second Reading: 1 John 4: 11-16.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit. Moreover, we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world. Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. 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.
Comment
We are still in John’s long discourse on love. He makes no difference between the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor. Our faith in God is made possible and even perfect through the love we have for one another. The essence of God is to be found in the love we have for one another. The love that is God banishes, fear, hatred and rivalry.
In this passage, the Apostle underlines the love which God has shown us by sending his Son into the world to die for our salvation. God expects us to respond in kind by loving our neighbor unconditionally as he, God, has loved us. By loving one another we are in total communion with God. But we cannot claim to love God who we cannot see, as John tells us, and despise our brother or sister, who we see.
Loving our neighbor is made easier by the gift of the Holy Spirit who connects us with God. Since the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son, his presence in the soul necessarily moves the person to keep all the commandments, particularly that of brotherly love.
Saint John vividly reminds us that he and the other Apostles saw the Son of God with their own eyes. They were eyewitnesses of his redemptive life and death and they saw with what love he loved and died for us. He was the love of God made manifest in the world.
As we await the coming of the Holy Spirit, let us pray for the grace to love and serve others as Christ himself loved and served us. We make our supplication through Christ, the risen Lord who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen, alleluia.
Gospel acclamation: “Alleluia, alleluia. I will not leave you orphans, says the Lord. I will come back to you, and your hearts will rejoice. Alleluia.”
Gospel: John 17: 11-16.
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed, saying: “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
Comment
At the end of the discourse of the Last Supper (chapters 13-16), Saint John begins what is called the Priestly Prayer of Christ. It covers Chapter 17 from where the reading of our day is taken. It is given that name because in it Jesus addresses his Father in a very moving dialogue in which, as Priest, he offers him the imminent sacrifice of his passion and death. As the Eucharistic prayer in the Mass consecrates the offerings, so the Priestly Prayer of Jesus tells the whole meaning of his life and consecrates him for the sacrifice of his Hour. It is also a prayer for the consecration of Jesus’ disciples in their mission to the world, and for the Church they form.
The Priestly Prayer consists of three parts: in the first part (vv. 1-5) Jesus asks for the glorification of his holy human nature and the acceptance, by his Father, of his sacrifice on the cross. In the second part (vv. 6-19), from where our meditation comes, he prays for his disciples, who will soon go out into the world to proclaim the redemption which he is about to accomplish; and in the third part (vv. 20-26), he prays for unity among all those who will believe in him over the course of the centuries, until they achieve full union with him in heaven.
In this passage, Jesus prays to his Father to keep his disciples holy and faithful to their discipleship. They have chosen to take Christ’s word to the world and the Father must keep them true to the divine mission they have chosen.
He asks his Father to give his disciples four things – unity, perseverance, joy, and holiness. By praying to the Father to keep them in his name, he is asking for their perseverance in the teaching he has given them.
He also prays that none of them should be lost, that the Father should guard and protect them, just as he himself protected them while he was with them. As a result of their union with God and perseverance, they will share in Christ’s joy. The more we know God and the more closely we are joined to him, the happier we will be.
Finally, he prays for those who, though living in the world, are not of the world, that they may be truly holy and carry out the mission he has entrusted to them, just as he did the work his Father gave him to do.
When he prays for the holiness or sanctification of his disciples, Jesus calls on his Father to set them apart from the profanity of this world. If anything is to be sacrificed to God, it must be perfect, that is, holy. Hence, a consecrated person needs to have moral sanctity and needs to practice moral virtues. Christ asks for both things for his disciples as they will need them if they are to fulfill their supernatural mission in the world.
Jesus’ act of consecration is also his supreme act of revealing himself. So he asks his Father that the disciples too may share in the consecration of the supreme message of salvation – Jesus the Son of God and Lord of all.
We pray for the grace to receive Christ’s Spirit worthily so as to be considered worthy disciples on whose behalf our Blessed Lord can pray to his Father to consecrate, as he did his disciples of old, for their mission on earth, especially the mission of love of God and love of one’s neighbor. We make our supplication through Christ the risen Lord. Amen, alleluia.
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