Tuesday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 16, 2023

John 16, 5-11

Jesus said to his disciples: “Now I am going to the one who sent me, and not one of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts. But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation: sin, because they do not believe in me; righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”

Today, May 16, is the 24th anniversary of my first Mass and yesterday was the 24th anniversary of my ordination to the Priesthood.  I thank God for this most-undeserved vocation and pray — and I ask you for prayers — that I may serve him with all the loyalty and devotion of which I am capable.  Every day I think of the moments that led me to the Priesthood, marveling at Divine Providence.  

“Now I am going to the one who sent me, and not one of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ ”  St. Thomas had said to the Lord earlier in the discourse, “We do not know where we are going.  How can we know the way?”  But he did not ask where the Lord was going, only where the road lay that would take him to the Lord.  Many times during the course of his preaching the people or the disciples do not understand what the Lord has said but only ask themselves what he meant.  This is true, for instance, when the Lord revealed himself as the Bread of life.  Here, the Lord shows his astonishment st this fact.  They want to know but do not go to the trouble to ask the one who can explain it to them.  It is almost as if they preferred to make up their own answer.  Unfortunately, this is a common human trait. 

“But because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts.”  That is, the Apostles grieve at the announcement that he is departing even though they do not ask where he is going — it may not be far or for very long.

“But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”  It is better for them because it is through the grace they receive from the Holy Spirit that they will go out to the world to preach the Gospel and so enter eternal life.  If the Lord does not depart from them, they will not go far from him and will always seek to return to him.

“And when he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation.”  The Greek word translated here as “convict” actually means “to expose” or “to rebuke”.  In this case, the Holy Spirit exposes and, by doing so, rebukes the world.  “Sin, because they do not believe in me.”  The Holy Spirit will act in the Apostles so that they preach the truth about God and about humanity and it’s need for a Savior.  This will provoke persecution by those who do not want to hear that they have sinned and wish to continue sinning unimpeded.  “Righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me.”  The Holy Spirit will enable the Apostles to know where the Lord Jesus is going, why he is going, and that he will come again.  In this way, he will expose the hostility or indifference of the world to the salvation offered to it.“Condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”  The coming of the Holy Spirit and the subsequent spread of the Gospel even in the face of violent persecution will expose the defeat and condemnation of the devil.

The Church offers these readings in which the Son of God teaches about the Spirit in order to prepare us for the great Feast of Pentecost and also to remind us of the tremendous gift of the Holy Spirit whom we have received in Baptism and Confirmation — which makes us Christians and enables us also to spread the Gospel through prayer, good deeds, and opportune words.

 Monday in the Sixth Week of Easter, May 15, 2023

John 15, 26; 16, 4

Jesus said to his disciples: “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.  I have told you this so that you may not fall away. They will expel you from the synagogues; in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God. They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me. I have told you this so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you.”

The Lord Jesus pronounces the great mystery of the Holy Trinity in these words: “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me.”  The Father begets the Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (and the Son).  Three distinct Persons equal in power and majesty who exist in a unity so profound that they are one God.  The ecstasy of heaven will consist for us of beholding the magnificence of this unity in which love is out-poured relentlessly, and in experiencing this love and being part of this unity ourselves, for the saints remain members of the Body of Christ in heaven.

“He will testify to me.”  The Holy Spirit does far more than remind us of Jesus from time to time but causes his memory to abide in us in such a way that we imitate him in our lives.  He makes us aware of the Lord’s presence in us and helps us to understand his words and deeds as recorded in the Scriptures, to apply them to our daily behavior, and to know his will for us now.  “And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.”  The Holy Spirit, through these means enables us to testify to the Lord Jesus to others through our works and words.  Just as the Holy Spirit convinces us of Jesus and makes us aware of Jesus so that we can know him, so we help others to learn of him and come to know him.  As the Holy Spirit is sent, so we are sent.

“I have told you this so that you may not fall away.”  Our understanding of ourselves as greater than mere receptacles of faith but as transmitters of faith helps us to persevere in it.  The Faith is alive, it is vibrant, and it must be shared.  “They will expel you from the synagogues; in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God.”  The Jewish leaders did this to those who professed Christ, essentially ostracizing them from the communities of their families, towns, and cities.  To be put out of the synagogue meant that you would no longer have customers for your trade.  In many cases, people’s homes were confiscated.  Not long afterwards, the Jewish authorities were arresting and killing those who had converted.  “They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me.”  The Lord reassures the Apostles that they will be persecuted by the authorities they revered from their youth, but that these authorities in fact did not serve God.  They did not “know” God, which is to say that they merely acted out of their own motives.  “I have told you this so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you.”  Throughout the Gospels, the Lord advised his disciples that they would be persecuted by those committed to evil, and he counseled them that they were not to think that they were not in the wrong, but rather suffering as he, the Lord, had suffered.  “Their hour”, the brief time in which the wicked shall persecute the faithful, thereby strengthening their faith.  “But this is your hour and the power of darkness”, as the Lord said to the chief priests.  But their hour was indeed brief for the Lord rose three days later.  

 The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, May 14, 2023

John 14, 15–21

Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate.”  The Greek parakletos, translated here as “advocate” was a counsel for the defense or legal assistant in the court system in Ancient Greece.  Originally, the defendant (as well as the plaintiff) spoke for himself, though sometimes using speeches prepared by hired experts in the law, but over time the defendant was allowed to employ counsel.  This counsel argued or pleaded on behalf of his client, attempting to sway the jury by his skill.  The Lord’s choice of the term and John’s translation into Greek of it put the Advocate, here the Holy Spirit, in opposition to Satan, whose name means “adversary” or “accuser”.  A verse from Revelation elucidates the Accuser’s role: “Now is come salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ: because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of the testimony: and they loved not their lives unto death” (Revelation 12, 10-11).  These words are spoken by a voice from heaven following the last great persecution.  Satan “accuses” to God those who follow the Lamb in order that they be condemned.  He both tempts the just and exaggerates their failings.  His purpose is only to destroy.  The Holy Spirit, acting as Advocate, strengthens the just, protects them from temptation, and shows the truth regarding their lives.  The world cannot “accept” him, in both the sense of understanding who he is and in the sense of granting his legitimate role.  The world does not understand virtue and does not accept actual truth.  We might remember how Pilate, whom we can understand as a personification of the world, rejected that there could be such a thing as truth: “What is truth?”

“But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you.”  That is, “You are coming to know him” because he “will be in you”, not that he is in you at this moment, for the Holy Spirit will come to you only after the Resurrection.  The Apostles will know the Holy Spirit through the work they will be able to do when he has come to them, which work they could never have done without him.  These Apostles who will run from the Jews and hide at the time of the Lord’s arrest and even after his Death will boldly preach the Gospel in foreign lands, converting thousands.

“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”  The Lord comes to us even today through the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  He will never abandon us, but will be with us until the end of the world (cf. Matthew 28, 20).  “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live.”  The world, which has no faith, will not “see” the Resurrection, but those who have faith will: the Apostles after the Lord rises, and we who persevere in our faith will see him when he comes again to judge the living and the dead: “You shall see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (John 1, 51). “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.”  Here the Lord speaks of when the Apostles receive the Holy Spirit, at Pentecost. 

“Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”  Love is expressed through service and sacrifice.  This is a painful reality to face in these hedonistic times, and marriage and fertility rates have declined precipitously in the West because people are unwilling to truly give themselves to another in a real union.  But with the grace that God gives us, we can live out our lives in service to him, and helping one another to observe his commandments.  This service does not result in merely being permitted to live another day, but in enjoying the presence of God in our lives, luxuriating in the experience of his love.

 Saturday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 13, 2023

John 15, 18-21

Jesus said to his disciples: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.”

“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.”  St. John translates the Aramaic or Hebrew word the Lord used into the Greek kosmos, meaning “world” or “universe”.  He does not translate it into the Greek word for “earth”, as in “the planet earth”.  By this we learn that the Lord was not saying that the earth hated the Apostles, but the world.  The Lord speaks in negative terms of the world throughout the Gospel of St. John, and the Apostle continues this theme in his Letters.  As the Lord uses it we should understand society and its materialistic snares ruled over by the devil; and fallen human nature, which fights against our will to love and obey God.  The first we find personified in the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation: “I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was clothed round about with purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written: ‘A mystery: Babylon the great, the mother of the fornications and the abominations of the earth.’ And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17, 3-6).  St. Paul writes of the second: “For the good which I will, I do not: but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it: but sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7, 19-20).  By his Death on the Cross, the Lord Jesus delivers us from the power of both, yet each may persuade us to throw off the grace won for us at such a cost and to indulge ourselves to the point of destruction.

In the context of the Lord’s words, however, “the world” here means the external realm of temporary pleasures and false delights that later bring on grief and remorse, if not repentance, for the Lord’s interior existed in perfect harmony.  The influence of the devil so pervades civil society — any society and any time in history — that we can almost take for granted that if we do the opposite of what its members do and believe the opposite of what they believe, we will surely set ourselves on the right track.  

“If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.”  Those who seek their salvation in the Lord Jesus suffer from various temptations throughout their lives, but those who have given the,selves up to the world do not suffer temptations: they pursue evil and so are not pursued by it.  Therefore, we ought to fear a little when we are not suffering some temptation.  Through infirmity, weariness, gradual loss of faith, or some vice posing as a virtue that creeps slowly into our lives any of us can pass into the grip of the world from the sweet embrace of Jesus Christ.

“No slave is greater than his master.”  Although this saying seems plain enough not to have needed speaking, it is one which we, with our fallen human nature, often forget or overlook.  Times and circumstances certainly arise in which we think we know better than God does, or that if we do not act on our own accord, all will be lost.  We reject prayer and discernment as though God would only get in our way in our attempts to solve our problem.  But God knows all that is to befall us and has arranged in his marvelous providence for it to benefit our salvation.  We need to cooperate with his providence, seeking his will.  Seeking our own to the exclusion of his will always result in catastrophe.

“If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”  We should expect persecution from those who persecuted the Lord because we are members of his Body: when the wicked see us, they see Christ and attack him through us.  Though they cannot injure the Head they can afflict the members of his Body.  But this affliction is to the good for it exercises the members in their “spiritual muscles” which strengthens their faith. 

“And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.”  Those who are wicked, such as the Pharisees, may claim to know the one, the Father, who sent Jesus, but they do not.  As the Lord himself points out later in his discourse: “Yea, the hour is coming, that whosoever kills you will think that he does a service to God” (John 16, 2). 

The Son of God has chosen us “out of the world”, to live according to his law and not according to the enticements offered by our society including the easy surrender to materialism, and to live in integrity through his grace.  It is, in fact, a stark choice and we can make no compromises here.  If it is true that we must “hate” our parents, brothers, sisters, and children for the sake of Jesus, then how much more true it is that we must despise the immoral things the world holds out to us, luring us to our destruction.

Friday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 12, 2023

 John 15:12-17

Jesus said to his disciples: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.”

“This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.”  This might have seemed like an odd commandment the moment Jesus gave it.  These men to whom he was speaking had followed him more or less harmoniously for three years.  There had been disputes here and there, but they had subsided.  These men understood that they were bound together in the fellowship of Christ.  However, the Lord immediately defines what “love” means and what he expects of his disciples: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Love, then, means the willingness to die for the other.  Love means sacrifice, or, at the very least, the willingness to sacrifice for another.  The image of love is the crucifix.  Christ desires unity among his Apostles after he leaves them, but he wants more than a general agreement on principles.  He wants them to love each other with the love with which he loved them.  This makes them Christians, men worthy of his name.

The Lord characterizes these men as his “friends”, so long as they do as he commands them.  This ought to sound like an odd qualification for a “friend”, for what person commands his friends?  But Jesus does not call them his equals.  Indeed, he says that he formerly called them “slaves”.  He has raised them up by his confiding in them as friends “everything I have heard from the Father.”  But it is he who has done the raising.  He is the undisputed leader, but he chooses to love his followers as his friends.  He emphasizes his primacy by reminding them that, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.”  At this reminder, each of the Apostles must have thought back to the dramatic moment in which he had heard the Lord call him: Peter and Andrew, and James and John, on their boats early in the morning; Matthew at his desk, collecting taxes; Bartholomew, who was sitting under a fig tree, meditating.

An important reason for Jesus reminding them that he had chosen them, not them him, is that this is the reverse for how movements develop.  That is, a person speaks or performs some action or lays out his beliefs in a manifesto, and people are attracted to him or to his beliefs and they begin to follow and even support him.  John the Baptist and the prophets of old acquired followers in this way.  But it is individuals  who make the choice to follow them.  Jesus, by contrast, calls people to himself.  He calls them as one who already knows them and what will be for their good.  Jesus actively desires these particular people.  They are not numbers to him.  And as he has called them and they have responded, he himself is the source of their unity.  This reality makes Christianity very distinct from any other religion or philosophical movement.  And it was not true only for the first followers of Christ; it continues to be true today.  Everyone who is a Christian is so because he or she has been called personally by Christ to be a member of his Body, and the person submits to baptism.  This is true whether the person is an infant or elderly.  Otherwise, a person could apply to be baptized and have his or her own ideas about what belonging to Jesus would mean.  Since Jesus calls first, we accept his invitation on his terms, or not at all.

 Thursday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 11, 2023

John 15, 9-11

Jesus said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.”

The Lord Jesus shows the connection of love and joy, and that it is love that creates joy.  Those who do not love are incapable of joy, while those who love open themselves to experiencing joy.  As St. John tells us in his First Letter, “Perfect love drives out fear” (1John 4, 18), as it does pride, anger, lust, and the other vices.  These are incompatible with love and make joy impossible.  How do we love so that we may experience this joy?  “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins” (1 John 4, 10).  That is, we are able to love because God first has loved us.  Our love is a response enabled by the knowledge and experience of God’s love, which he shows to us as without limit in sending his Son to expiate our sins.  Through meditation on the love God has for each of us personally we grow in our love for him.  We should understand that our love arises as a response because without the Lord we can do nothing at all — not exist, not breathe, not love.

“As the Father loves me, so I also love you.”  The love of the Son for us is infinite, without limit.  There is nothing he would not do for us, nothing that he has not done for us so that we might be saved.  He practically pleads for us to “remain” in his love, where alone we find fulfillment and joy.  We remain in his love through persevering in the life of faith which includes keeping his commandments that he made for our own good.  He himself gives us the perfect example to follow: “I have kept my Father’s commandments.”  He does this to the point of taking on a human nature in an act of supreme condescension, being born in a lowly stable, being raised in an ignoble village, allowing himself to be baptized as though a lowly sinner, and suffering death at the hands of his own creatures.  “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.”  He does not let us wander about blinding groping for joy but tells us how we might have it, and this joy is to be “complete”, that is, perfected in the ecstasy of heaven.

 Wednesday in the Fifth Week of Easter, May 10, 2023

John 15, 1-8

Jesus said to his disciples: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.”  The Lord Jesus revealed unity to us: first, his unity with the Father, and then our unity with each other in him.  Previously, people existed in communities, societies, and alliances.  These might be governed by contracts or covenants.  These might insist on some sort of conformity.  But before the time of grace unity was not possible.  The tribes of Israel had existed as a confederation, having the Mosaic Law and their ancestry in common, but this does not equate with unity, which exists, when it does exist, in the spiritual realm.  The Lord’s revelation of unity makes it possible to understand what he means by his Body, the Church.  The Apostles  taught unity to the early Christians, especially the Gentile converts, who had no understanding at all of this concept.  St. Paul devoted his entire Letter to the Ephesians to this topic in order for those Christians to understand themselves as part of the universal Church.  This unity provided a completely new identity for people, one that went far beyond family, tribe, and nation.  Helping new converts understand and honor their new identity in Christ proved one of the most difficult labors in the early Church.  

Here, the Lord speaks of himself as the “true vine” — that is, earthly grapevines resemble him in some slight degree; he does not resemble them.  The Father is the vine grower.  He planted the vine in the earth and bid it grow, providing the graces necessary for it to do so.  “He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.”  The Father does not walk away from the vine was it is planted, but cares for it by cutting off useless branches that absorb nutrients while producing nothing, and he prunes the branches that are producing in order to increase the yield of fruit.  We can understand this as removing from a believer any attachment to this world that hampers his growth.  This can be painful for the branch as it can mean the loss of things that are highly valued.  

“You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.”  The word that was spoken to them was this: “He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that takes not up his cross, and follows me, is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10, 37-38).  The Apostles have left everything to follow the Lord, and they know they can never go back to it.  Jesus is everything.  “Remain in me, as I remain in you.”  He remains in us through grace and we in him through prayer and obedience to his will.

“Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.”  It is the Lord alone who is the vine, who nourishes us and causes us to grow and to bear fruit.  If the vine disappears or withholds life from us, his branches, we die.  We cannot breathe and our hearts cannot beat without his willing it and causing it.  We cannot exist at all without him.  We ought often to meditate on this.  We can forget our spouses, parents, and children while we are engaged in work and they do not disappear.  We may think we are the center of their lives, but our lack of attention does not result in their falling into non-existence.  But we are utterly and permanently dependent upon God for everything.

“Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.”  Anyone who disobeys the Source of our life and acts contrary to his will, which is for our good, will be cast away from the Vine and his sharing in the divine life  will die.  He will be good for nothing but to be burned, and his burning shall be forever.  “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.”  Through our obedience and conformity to God’s will we shall love and remain in Christ, and that which we ask in order to obey him and remain in conformity to his will shall be granted to us.

“By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”  All that the Son does in heaven and on earth is for the glory of the Father.  As members of him, this is our purpose as well, to glorify the Father.  We do not do this on our own or independently of the Son but in the Son, as his disciples, made members of his Body.  This is a great calling that has been given to us: to share in the work of the Son, and it is in the glorifying of the Father with him that we shall find our greatest joy.