(Homily for the 6th
Sunday of Easter Year A)
From this
Sunday, attention moves from the risen Christ to the Holy Spirit, from the
Risen Lord to His Gift. In fact, we can call it a brief advent in preparation
for Pentecost. The departure of Jesus
does not mean that he is now absent; rather it entails his ever renewed
presence through the coming of the Spirit. Be that as it may, at the
verge of the closing of the Easter season we move from the contemplation of the
resurrection appearances to the meditation on the continued presence of the
exalted Christ in and with his Church through the Spirit. The coming of
Christ was prepared for ages, from the proclamation of the prophets and the
voice of John the Baptist, the precursor of the Messiah. But for the advent of
the Holy Spirit, Jesus himself announces it: “I shall ask the Father, and he
will give you another Paraclete to be with you for ever” (v. 16), He is the
‘Precursor of the Paraclete’. Indeed, the first promise that Jesus made to
his disciples was the gift of the Spirit, who comes as the Paraclete, the
Advocate. As Jesus prepares to leave the scene, He prepares the minds of his
disciples for the advent of the Paraclete. This indeed, is one of the greatest
promises in the New Testament.
As a matter
of fact, the three readings of today are to prepare us to wait and to desire the
coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The readings serve as an anticipation
of the Pentecost. The liturgy presents Jesus who promises the Holy Spirit to
his disciples (Gospel). St. Luke presents Peter and John “praying for the newly
baptized Christians of Samaria, so that they can receive the Holy Spirit”
(First reading). And St. Peter in his first letter says “Christ as man suffered
death, but was restored to life by the Holy Spirit” (Second reading). The readings help us to understand better
the One whom we are expecting. And we may ask: who is the Holy Spirit? We usually say that He is the third Person
of the Holy Trinity, and with that it does appear we have said all about Him.
He is truly a Person, not simply the creating breath of God as presented in the
Old Testament. He is not the breath of man, the divine priniciple in him. Christ
says of Him: ‘whom the Father will send in my name’ (Jn.14:26) and ‘He dwells’ (v.17);
and St. Paul pointed out that He prays in us with sighs too deep for words (cf. Rm. 8:26). The theologians
identify Him as the love of the Father and the Son. The Spirit conveys the presence of the
Son, who reveals the Father. However, it is obvious that we cannot know
fully who the Spirit is in se, but we
can know who He is for us. As evident in
today’s readings He is the Paraclete, He dwells in the life of the baptized and
He is the Giver of life.
In the Gospel
of last Sunday the Lord Jesus promises that He was going to leave us, but it was not all about distancing himself
from us, rather he precedes us: I am going to prepare a place for you, so
that where I am you also will be (cf.
Jn. 14:2-3). Therefore, the separation were to be a temporary one. But
interestingly, today in the Gospel (Jn.
14:15-21) Jesus promises his
disciples something more, not about the future, but about the present time
characterized with trials. He promises the Holy Spirit and he presents Him
as the “Paraclete” and the “Spirit of Truth”. He is the Paraclete, the
Advocate, the Counselor, the third Person of the Holy Trinity. ●Spirit Paraclete, because he has the
mandate of sustaining the apostles and disciples in the difficulties they were
to confront and comforts us in every tribulation. ●Spirit of Truth because he has the duty to illumine and
enwisdomise the apostles and disciples so that they will understand better the
Truth announced by Christ.
In the
history of salvation there is a
harmonious succession in the manifestation of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit, always for the benefit of man’s salvation. The Father is the origin
and fount of every salvific initiative. In his love for man, he sent his Son to
redeem and restore man to his filial condition, (as sons and daughters). As
soon as the Son realized his mission, He sent the Holy Spirit, so that he
accompanies man in his pilgrimage on earth towards the Father. Indeed, the
liturgy of today presents the promise made by Jesus to his disciples, to send
the Holy Spirit, so that he will remain always with them. Why did Jesus make
this promise to them? So that the disciples will not feel abandoned like
orphans, because Jesus was about to
return to the Father; and he says to them and to us: “I will not leave
you orphans, I will return to be with you” (Jn.
14:18), but not personally, rather through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit as he promised is not going to
be a momentary Gift, but a stable and permanent one: “I will pray to the Father and he will give you another Paraclete, to be
with you forever” (Jn.14:16). The presence of the Paraclete is a real and
continuous presence, even though invisible. From the christological
standpoint, we may say that this is a realization of Jesus’ promises not to
leave us orphans, not to abandon us, else where He tells us: “I am with you,
until the end of time” (Mt. 28:20).
The promise
of Jesus in the Last Supper is for the Church and for every single Christian,
as such today’s gospel is also comforting for us. The Spirit that Jesus
promises us is a Spirit of Truth (who will guide us to the comprehension of the
entire Truth revealed by Jesus himself), Spirit
of divine power (who renders us capable of witnessing to the Gospel), Spirit of consolation (who comforts us
in all our tribulations). Our God is a God of consolation, He
spoke through the prophets inviting them to console His people, “Console,
console my people” (Is. 40:1). St.
Paul captured well this image of God when he invoked God thus: “the Father of
mercy and the God of all consolation” (2
Cor. 1:3). This consolation of God was incarnated in Jesus Christ, for He
went around consoling every form of suffering and preaching consolation:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be consoled” (Mt.5:5). “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and
i will give you rest” (Mt.11:28).
And before leaving this world, Jesus prayed to the Father so that he will send
the Holy Spirit, who will remain with us for ever. He is not going to be with or to console us from a distance or
momentarily, Jesus says: “he is with you, he is in you” (Jn. 14:17). The Eucharist is the sacrament that renews this presence of the Holy
Spirit in us, as the Spirit of the risen Christ. In the canon of the Mass,
we pray: “to us who are nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ give the
fullness of the Holy Spirit”, knowing that with the fullness of the Holy
Spirit, he will give us also the fullness of his consolation. He equally wants us to become comforters to those who
are in tribulation. The Father through
his Son and the Holy Spirt comforts and consoles us; however, we are also
called to console others in return: “God consoles us in all our tribulation,
we are also to console others with the same consolation we have received from
God” (2Cor. 1:4). But
today we need to ask ourselves, what are we to do, to have this consolation of
the Spirit? We need to stop going to other sources for consolation, in the
words of Jeremiah, many a times we abandon the source of living water and go to
“cracked water-tanks that hold no water” (Jer.
2:13), those sources maybe riches, pleasure, desires of the flesh and false
spirits etc.
Before
this promise, Jesus called his apostles to a more serious commitment: “If you
love me you would keep my commandment” (Jn.
14:15). As such, we may well affirm that loving Him and keeping his
commandments are the criteria for receiving the Holy Spirit. He further
expressed that in the last verse of our passage: “whoever holds to my
commandment and keeps them, is the one who loves me; and whoever loves me will
be loved by my Father and I shall love him and reveal myself to him” (Jn. 14:21). As we can see, Jesus
started his speech to his apostles with the word “if” and ends with “whoever”,
He says if you love me, whoever that loves me, He did not say you must love me,
for God’s love is a humble, suggestive
and a propositive love, never by coercion or imposition, it is love in freedom.
However, to love him is not easy, for you cannot love Him without paying the
price, and the price is keeping his commandment. Thus, in the parlance of Jesus a Christian is a loved, who becomes a lover.
In this passage, we see for the first time Jesus asks to be loved, prior to
this he says that the greatest commandment is: “You will love the Lord your
God…, and your neighbor as yourself” (Mt.
22:37; Mk. 12:30-31; Lk. 10:27), in the previous chapter of this Gospel,
Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment saying: “love one another as I have
loved you” (Jn. 13:34). And today he
adds himself in the objective of the Christian love. Jesus calls the attention
of his apostles to proof that they love him by keeping the commandments. The proof of loving him, is keeping his
commandments (“probatio amoris, exhibitio est operis”). The vital question we
have to ask ourselves today is this: what does Jesus want from us? He wants us
to love him not with words but with facts. That we love each other as he loved
us (model and reason), He should be the
reason and the model of our love.
In the
first reading (Acts 8:5-8.14-17) we
listened to the narrative of the coming of the Holy Spirit on one of the first
Christian communities, the one formed in Samaria through the preaching of the
apostle Philip. The message therein points to
the fact that in order to be the Church of Christ, we have to be in communion
with the apostles, because they serve as guarantors of the authenticity of our
faith. This is exemplified in this passage, when the apostles in Jerusalem
learnt that those in Samaria have accepted the Word of God they sent Peter and
John, this was to ascertain the
authenticity of their faith and to confer on them the Holy Spirit. More than that, the Acts of the Apostles is organized in such a way that it
traces the expansion of the mission of the Church from Jerusalem, Judea and
Samaria to the ends of the earth (cf. Acts 1:8). As such, one of the
theological concerns of the Acts, as reflected in this passage, is to maintain
the ties between the expanding mission of the Church and the mother Church at
Jerusalem. However, in this passage we see something unfamiliar in the Acts
of the Apostles, that is the fact that Baptism does not convey the gifts of the
Spirit, as it has been the case in the Acts (cf. Acts 1:4-5; 11:15-16),
but in this episode it has to wait for the arrival of Peter and John in order
to lay hands on the converts. Peter and John
prayed for the Christians of Samaria so that they will receive the Holy Spirit,
they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. And we may
ask: where does the Spirit come? The first reading tells us that He comes where
the Word of God has already been accepted (with a visible sign of conversion).
In the
second reading (1Pt. 3:15-18)
instead, this presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church nourishes our Christian
and spiritual life with serenity, trust and hope. And this Hope in us, we have
to know how to defend it, how to give the reason behind it. St. Peter tells us
to do this through a courageous witness to the Word of God, especially through
honest life, learning to suffer like Christ, with unconditional love and with
works that conform to the will of God. Therefore we have to be ready always to
give reason of the hope in us (v.15).
We have to do this with sweetness and
respect, with right conscience and good conduct. Behold, we have to
understand that the hope we are talking about here, is not just ordinary hope,
but hope personified in Jesus and in God. As such, giving reason for the hope in us is paramount to giving reason for the
presence of God in us. St. Paul makes this clearer to us in his letter to
the Romans where he called God: “God of Hope” (15:13), and in his first letter to Timothy where he proclaimed “Christ
Jesus our hope” (1Tm. 1:1). On the
other hand, our hope does not make us fold our arms to wait for when manner
will fall from heaven, rather it is a hope that propels us to be active and
operative, little wonder St. Paul sustained that “we toil and battle because we
have put our hope in the living God” (1Tm.
4:10). But the hit track of this
epistle reading is found in the last sentence of this passage: “In the body
he was put to death, in the Spirit he was raised to life” (v.18). The Spirit, the Paraclete is the giver of life, the
restorer to life.
Behold, in
today’s readings especially in the Gospel passage we see the three divine
Persons in action for our love, sanctification and restoration. It is not only
that Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to those who love Him and keep his
commandment, “whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor
knows him” (v.17), but equally promises to make us partakers
in the trinitarian union, “you will know that I am in the Father and you
are in me and I in you” (v.20). Moreover,
the promised Paraclete gives life, it is the Spirit that restored Jesus to life
(second reading), and vivifies the Christians like the inhabitants of Samaria (first
reading). Above all, while the Gospel and the second reading give us indications on what
we can do to in order to welcome the Holy Spirit, the first reading presents a
practical example of His decent through imposition of hands. May we therefore,
implore the Spirit, who gives life to restore us to life, to life in abundance (cf. Jn. 10:10) that Jesus promised,
especially in this period that the abundant life promised us by Jesus is being
threatened by this present deadly pandemic (COVID 19). Let us not be overtaken
by panic for Jesus
assures us that we shall live because he lives, He is the living God, “you will
see that I live and you also will live” (Jn.14:19).
May the healing, sanctifying and restoring presence and power of the Holy
Spirit renew the face of the earth, heal us from this pandemic and console the
sorrowful, the abandoned and the sick. May the Paraclete find a fitting abode in our hearts for His indwelling!
Amen!!!
(Fr. Vitus M.C. Unegbu, SC)
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