Homily from the Parish Priest for the Sixth Sunday of Easter
Readings for Year B: Acts 10:25-26,34-35,44-48; I John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17
Have you ever felt you’ve been left bereft? Maybe the break-up of a relationship or perhaps a bereavement. The experience of being orphaned, of being left, of losing an anchor in life. Well, the disciples must have felt that too.
And this is the moment in the Church’s year we’re invited to enter into the experience of the disciples at such a time for them. Jesus is about to leave his disciples behind. Yet he is telling them not to be afraid. He invites them to trust in the power of love, to a greater trust indeed than they have ever needed. God has shown his love for us in his victory over death. The event, the moment, the reality of the cross is in a sense behind us. It is history. The tomb, Easter morning, the resurrection appearances. Suspended in time. And now God will show us the depth of his love in how he will be with us not just at a point in time suspended forever but now for all time. The Father will send the Holy Spirit into the Church. And the Holy Spirit will help us to know that love, will remind us who are left behind of everything the Lord taught us. Will in fact teach us how to live out His mission of love in the world.
These last weeks of Eastertide represent a sacred time of transition for the Church, a time for prayer, for renewal, for taking stock of where our faith lies and how we live by it. We, as were the first disciples, may well be anxious at this particular time of our lives and in our world too, as we begin to emerge from this dreadful pandemic into a new era. A lack of clarity perhaps. But we are called now not to be afraid but to take heart as the disciples did preparing to part company with the Lord in his physical presence on this earth, encapsulated as it was into a particular time and particular place. Invited now to pray for the Spirit of renewal, for ourselves and for us all so we may truly carry on the mission Our Lord has given us.
And a simple mission is given to us again today: to love as he has loved us. To love as he has loved us. Very simple and yet, in the highs and lows, twists and turns of our lives, a calling we are invited to return to again and again – to reflect on how we allow the Spirit of love to shine through us in our world.
In our relationships: family life, at work, and how we treat those who are in need, when they ask us for help, but also how we commit ourselves to a lifestyle which takes account of those so much less well off. Through what we give financially, in kind, but also our attitude to the poor, to ethnic minorities, to how we build up the common good through exercising our democratic rights, promoting the common good concretely and practically. How we treat the very earth in which we inhabit; how we cherish it and protect it for future generations.
For these are the places and the circumstances where the Spirit of love dwells and where the Spirit of love is to be welcomed in, nurtured, built up. It is the love which Christ Himself shows to His disciples and which he pledges to His Church. A love which calls us forward and outside of ourselves, to give ourselves more selflessly as He did in his life on this earth and above all on the cross. As new chapters begin in our country, and as we prepare to celebrate the ascension of the Lord to his father and the coming of the Spirit we remember that God’s command to love is at the heart of it all. And the more we enter into that mystery of the greatest love ever shown – laying down His life so that we may live forever – the more we respond to be more clearly and authentically disciples of Christ for others. And if we desire to be close to Him the Holy Spirit will surely move our desires to be transformed more clearly into more authentic living witnesses of his love and peace.
And here once more, as each Sunday and each day, we encounter that sacrificial love in the broken body and the blood poured out for us. For God so loved the world he gave his only Son. As we celebrate the eucharist this evening we pray that the Holy Spirit comes down on us and, as these gifts of bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Our Lord, we are transformed into closer servants of his mission of love for others and the world around us.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ