5th
Sunday of Easter
at St.
Mary’s in Salem
1-2 May 2021
Acts 9:26-31
1 Jn 3:18-24
Jn 15:1-8
Praised be
Jesus Christ!
“I am the vine… If you remain in me and my words remain in
you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for
you.”
“Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence
in God and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments
and do what pleases him.”
It is when you read or hear quotes like these that you understand
just how unjustified the bad wrap is, given to Mother Church by people who
either hate us without really knowing us or who may have been Catholic but cannot
seem to manage turning their backs on us for whatever reason, without just one
more parting shot. For their misery which they blame on Jesus, most anti- or
former Catholics are in bad conscience. They are to blame; they are culpable
and no one else, not their parents and not society or some mediocre or worse
priest they might have known. They are wrong to try and blame the Church, the
Mystical Body of Christ, for all the injustice and cruelty they claim to have
suffered.
Granted, it is truly unfortunate that the quotes we just read
make no sense to them. But they are the ones who will not allow the Scriptures
to apply to the Church as it carries out its mission in the name of Jesus. They
reduce the Church acting in the name of Jesus to precious little or nothing
beyond being a merely human institution at best, but probably corrupt at that. They
refuse to see Jesus as God and accept the logical consequences of what that
means in terms of His holy will for the life of the world as it is revealed to
us in and through the Church which He established to carry on in His place, to guide
and guard people until His Second Coming at the end of time.
These two quotes from the readings for this 5th
Sunday of Easter are classic St. John the Evangelist and not the only such as we
read from St. John in both his Gospel, quoting the Lord Jesus directly, and in
his first Letter. Sadly because of all the Church’s critics and with the
complicity of our neighbors who seem to be caught up in negativism, St. John’s words
present a message to which we are not accustomed: “…ask
for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” Rarely do you hear that or get to hear
the Church’s saintly confessors proclaiming this message, and working wonders
at the same time, to demonstrate just how true it is.
Just think about how during the pandemic civil authorities in
some states and in other countries around the world have been so restrictive on
the Church, to the point of blocking access to churches for the Sunday Mass, the
holy action which essentially defines us. We believe as Catholics that without
the Mass we cannot properly survive in this world. Think of the added tragedy
of the pandemic, which was and is people in the Church who restricted
themselves and fellow Catholics even more than the civil authorities required! Some
of these people have effectively placed themselves on the warpath against what
the Second Vatican Council taught about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Mass
understood as Sunday Mass is the source and summit of Christian existence. People
who claim to be Catholic, no matter if they are priests, deacons, or bishops,
when they further this restrictive agenda of our enemies, are indulging in an
exercise which is usually labeled “cutting off your nose to spite your face…”
What to do?
I suppose the real question is another, and namely whether we
are reading the Scriptures from this Sunday correctly. Do we understand that as
adopted children of God we need to ask of the Heavenly Father in the same way
and words that Jesus did, He being the only begotten Son? God the Father will
answer us, His adopted children through Baptism, just as He did the Lord Jesus,
revealed over and over in His public life as God’s beloved Son.
Just a couple chapters earlier than what we just heard from the
Gospel of St. John we read the words of Jesus: “Now My soul is troubled, and
what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? No, it is for this purpose
that I have come to this hour. ‘Father, glorify Your name!’ Then a voice came
from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’” [Jn
12:27-28]
Do we understand that as an obedient son or daughter of God what
we truly want and ask of God, just as Jesus did time and again, is that His
will be done in us and in all things? That is what we want.
St. Matthew’s Gospel may be more familiar to us from his
account of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. “O My Father, if it is
possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You
will.” [Matt. 26:39]
Jesus sought the will of His heavenly Father even unto drinking
the cup of terrible suffering unto death. This is what we seek to share.
And among Jesus’ last words from the Cross as recounted in
St. Luke: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”
[Luke 23:34]
Not only does Jesus embrace the Father’s will for the
salvation of the world through the death and suffering of His only Son, but He
does this by forgiving those who did Him in and asks the Father to forgive them
as well.
“…ask for whatever you want and it will be done for
you.” What all then did Jesus endure
and what is He asking us His followers to suffer and endure united to Him, the
vine? And how is that getting whatever we want? What do we stand to gain? Somebody
might be thinking, hey, you are pretending to give with one hand while really taking
with the other.
How do I live with such great words, such that I am not
scandalized by Christ’s Church and turn away, as did many who heard Him talk
about Himself as the true Bread come down from Heaven for the sake of the life
of the world? Difficult as it can be, we need to claim the words of Simon Peter
for ourselves, who answered Him when others walked away, “Lord, to whom
shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” [John 6:68]
I hope that Sunday, the Lord’s Day, gives you time to sort things
out and understand it our goal to unite our will to that of Christ and therein
find our consolation.
“Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence
in God and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments
and do what pleases him.”
Praised be Jesus Christ!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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