The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 22, 2022

John 14:23–29

Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me. I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe.”

“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”  The Lord asks so little and yet promises so much in return!  To keep his word is simply to do what is good for us, and what will make us happy.  His “word” is love: love of God and love of neighbor.  The alternative is a selfish love of self and love of the world, which offers only passing pleasures that will leave us incapable of the joys of heaven.  The Lord’s words also convey our dignity as Christians: we are “the dwellings” of the Father and Son.  What sort of dwelling?  St. Paul says, “Know you not that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? But if any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which you are” (1 Corinthians 3, 16-17).   We are sacred dwellings of Almighty God: sacred by our consecration to him, sacred by his presence within us.  “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.”  There are those who profess to believe in God. But their falsity is clear from their actions.  They may be dwellings, but not of God.

In the second reading for today’s Mass we read: “The angel took me in spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It gleamed with the splendor of God. Its radiance was like that of a precious stone, like jasper, clear as crystal” (Revelation 21, 10-11).  This is how the Church Victorious in heaven was revealed to St. John in a vision.  Each of us is this in miniature when we are in a state of grace and in love with Almighty God.