May 14, 2023

 

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

 

If You Love Me… The Sprit Will Come

We are Christians, people who follow Christ. What makes us sure that we really love him? Jesus tells us today: “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” And we know that his commandment is: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself. Today Jesus promises us the Holy Spirit, who will make us see what we have to do to love God and our neighbor and who will give us the strength to do so. Let us ask Jesus present here to give us this Spirit of insight and strength.

 

Reading 1: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17

And Saul just went wild, devastating the church, entering house after house after house, dragging men and women off to jail. Forced to leave home base, the followers of Jesus all became missionaries. Wherever they were scattered, they preached the Message about Jesus. Going down to a Samaritan city, Philip proclaimed the Message of the Messiah. When the people heard what he had to say and saw the miracles, the clear signs of God’s action, they hung on his every word. Many who could neither stand nor walk were healed that day. The evil spirits protested loudly as they were sent on their way. And what joy in the city!

When the apostles in Jerusalem received the report that Samaria had accepted God’s Message, they sent Peter and John down to pray for them to receive the Holy Spirit. Up to this point they had only been baptized in the name of the Master Jesus; the Holy Spirit hadn’t yet fallen on them. Then the apostles laid their hands on them and they did receive the Holy Spirit.

 

Reading 2: 1 Pt 3:15-18

 If with heart and soul you’re doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you’re still better off. Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.

 

Gospel: Jn 14:15-21

“If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you. I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!

18-20 “I will not leave you orphaned. I’m coming back. In just a little while the world will no longer see me, but you’re going to see me because I am alive and you’re about to come alive. At that moment you will know absolutely that I’m in my Father, and you’re in me, and I’m in you.

21 “The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that’s who loves me. And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him.”

 

Prayer
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
your Son has promised
not to leave us orphans.
Give us the Holy Spirit of Truth,
to be with us and to live in us,
that we may know where are we going
and that we may follow Jesus Christ
on his way to you and to people.
May this Spirit kindle in us
the love of Jesus,
that we make the Good News of his love
visible and tangible to all.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection :

14 May 2023

V Sunday of Easter Year A

John 14:15-21

It’s a sin against the Holy Spirit to oppose renewal.

Today’s Gospel is part of Jesus’ first farewell speech at the Last Supper. Jesus promises not to abandon his chosen disciples without protection and guidance. He promises that the Heavenly Father will “send another helper” who will always be with them (v. 16). But the world cannot receive the paraclete, says Jesus.

When Jesus uses the term “world”, he does not refer to persons but to attitudes in each person—wherein darkness, sin, and death reign. Everyone has something good and bad. No one is without sins. But, Jesus consoles his disciples as he says not to lose heart when hatred, concupiscence, and uncontrolled passion control them. It is because the world’s spirit is contrary to that of Christ.

In the Gospel today, Jesus promises another helper. He says “another” helper because we already have one – Jesus himself. Jesus is our first paraclete. John explains this in his first letter: “My little children, I write you these things so that you may not sin; but if anyone does sin, we have a Paraclete by the Father’s side: the righteous Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 2:1). He defends us and protects us against our accuser – the devil, our opponent. The enemy is sin, and Jesus knows how to overcome sin and the devil.

Jesus assures his disciples that he is not going away; he simply changes the type of his presence. He is no longer physically present but always as the Risen One. He stays with us in an entirely different way, infinitely and invisibly.

John reminds the Christians of his community that with the presence of the Risen Jesus and his Holy Spirit amid life’s difficulties, they would not be discouraged and would not lose their serenity, peace of heart and joy. We shall not be frightened or broken down even when we have so many spiritual miseries, frailties, and evil inclinations.

A disciple must remain open to the impulse of the Spirit, who constantly renews and reveals new things. He is, by his nature, the one who renews the face of the earth (Ps 104:30). Therefore, it is a sin against the Holy Spirit to oppose the renewal, to refuse the innovations that favour the life of the community, that bring people closer to Christ and to the brethren, that increase joy and peace, that help people to pray better and free the heart from useless fears

Those who stubbornly remain attached to already obsolete and worn out religious traditions, who are not diligently given to the study of the Word of God, who do not accept updating of rites, formulae, and liturgical gestures, who give old answers to new problems, who do not accept with joy the discovery of biblical exegesis, they place themselves in opposition to the Spirit of truth.

 

It’s a sin against the Holy Spirit to oppose renewal. – Youtube