Sacred Heart Parish

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5TH SUNDAY OF EASTER (C)

  1. Often times there is much excitement about what is new – going to a new school, making new friends, starting a new job, moving into a new house. However, as we realize from experience, what is new is never a case of pure joy. What is new can bring along its own share of sorrow and difficulty. The texts of our liturgy today speak to us about what is new as a result of the Lord’s resurrection. In our opening antiphon the psalmist instructs us – “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous deeds”. In our Gospel reading, the Lord Jesus himself tells us – “I give you a new commandment: Love one another”. In our prayer after Holy Communion, we say to God our Father – “May this Holy Communion give us new purpose and bring us to new life in you”. And in our second reading, the author shares with us what he saw in his prophetic visions, that is, a new heaven and a new earth; and God says to him and to us – “Behold, I make all things new”.

  2. I would direct your attention for a moment to the Preface Prayer you and I will recite at the beginning of the Eucharistic Canon: “Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we praise you with greater joy than ever in this Easter season, when Christ became our paschal sacrifice. In him a new age has dawned, the long reign of sin is ended, a broken world has been renewed and man is once again made whole.” Do these words express our Easter experience? After all, our pre-Easter news in society and our post-Easter news in society seem uninspiringly the same. One writer puts it this way: “Children are victims of violence and pornography; whole races are victims of prejudice and expediency; the living unborn, who it seems, have no rights, are victims of convenience and of those who insist on their own rights; the first world is a victim of wealth, and the other worlds are victims of poverty and illiteracy. We are all victims of our addictions and we all suffer from the misuse of our environment.” We ask then, especially of our own lives, has this Easter made a real difference? In principle, of course, the answer is “yes” – Easter is truly the victory of life over death, the resolution of all suffering in the healing power of the risen Christ. Yet sin and suffering and death remain present and powerful in our experience. We confront, then, the Easter paradox – one of joy and of suffering. The victory has been fully won in Christ’s physical body. It is not fully realized in Christ’s mystical body which is the Church. Perhaps our readings can help us to understand.

  3. In our first reading, Paul and Barnabas are bringing to a close the first of Paul’s three missionary journeys. As they return to Antioch in Syria, from where the journey began – they report to the Christian congregation all that God had helped them to accomplish, and how God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews. It is instructive for us to hear from Paul and Barnabas how they encouraged their new converts to persevere in their new-found faith. They said to them in all the joy of their conversion – Remember this: “We must undergo many trials if we are to enter into the kingdom of God”. Easter is a paradox of joy and suffering.

  4. Our second reading is from the Book which is placed last in the New Testament – a difficult book to read. It had its origin at a time of great crisis in the early Church. Its message, while directed to this crisis, is a message for all who follow Christ in all times and all places. The message tells us to remain steadfast in faith under the grace of the Holy Spirit, and to place unwavering trust in the promises of the risen Christ. Though there is adversity and suffering to endure, the Christian knows in faith that the Lord Jesus will triumph in his or her efforts for it is the risen Christ who dwells with his peoples in their sufferings, and the day will come when the Lord Jesus himself will wipe away every tear. There will be no more death and mourning for the former world will have passed away and God will make all things new. Once again, Easter is a paradox of joy and suffering.

  5. The setting for our Gospel reading is the Last Supper. Judas had departed. The Lord Jesus then washed the Apostles feet – anticipating the self-giving service he would complete on the cross on the first Good Friday. The Lord gave his disciples the new command which will always be for them and for us the sign of discipleship, the command to love after the pattern of the Lord’s love for them. Has Easter made a difference? Has a new age dawned? Has the reign of sin ended? The answer is found in our grace-inspired obedience to the new command. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan, was jailed by the Nazis. Ten prisoners were about to be put to death because of some prison infraction. One condemned man asked for his life to be spared – he had a wife and several small children. Back in Poland, Fr. Kolbe volunteered to take his place. (Several years ago, I remember reading of the death of the man whose life had been saved by Fr. Kolbe’s action. He had lived to see his children and grandchildren.) Easter makes a difference. This example seems overly dramatic but can we not discover other signs at work right here in the parish? Easter makes a difference when young couples give themselves in marriage, when parents oversee the religious education of their children and their sacramental practice, when older parishioners defy rain or snow in order to participate in the Sunday Eucharist, when adult men and women seek holiness of life by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them to God’s plan for the world.

  6. The question remains – Have we been liberated or not? Is it true that a new age has dawned; the long reign of sin has ended? The answer is – of course it is true. Christ is the world’s universal Redeemer. Christ is humanity’s liberator, objectively. Now that he is risen in glory, he has given us the Holy Spirit, the holy Church, the sacraments of the Church, the Creed of the Church, the Our Father, the prayer of the Church, so that we may work with God’s grace and gain salvation, subjectively and in fact. As St. Augustine expressed it centuries ago, God who made us without our cooperation will not save us without our cooperation. Christ’s Gospel as preached in the Church spells out the nature of the cooperation with our freedom which the Holy Spirit initiates, sustains and brings to perfection as we seek to fulfill the Lord’s command that we love one another as he has loved us. We are to become experts by God’s grace in such love. That is how all will know that you are my disciples. Easter can make a difference.