HOMILY for the 5th SUNDAY of EASTER
I am not sure how many people who go to Mass on Sunday realise that what each of us is doing is an act of love for the other people there. Mass is not just an offering of our love and praise to Almighty God, but part of the way we support one another. You can see and hear me give this Homily on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaGLS0oHMlg
To explain what I mean, think for a moment of how you feel when there aren’t many people around you in Church on a Sunday, and how different you feel when people are there. It’s also a reminder that when we aren’t at Sunday Mass, then even if we don’t know any of the other people in church very well, our failure to be there is a failure to love them. I hope it’s fairly obvious to anyone who’s a Christian that we can love people we don’t know, even people we don’t like. Jesus takes this even further doesn’t he when he says: “I say to you, Love your enemies.” And why are we meant to love like this? “So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matt 5:44-45)
One mistake that is often made is to think that love is always doing things for people, and certainly it is that; but more often than we might realise doing things for people may mean - just being there for them. Those of us who have been faced with someone who is dying have often had to realise that there is nothing we can do for them, except to be with them, to sit with them so they are not alone. Transfer that to the church situation, and remember that loving the parent who is there with restless children may simply be a matter of being alongside them, praising God that they’re there, rather than grumbling that they are disturbing us. Whenever new parents tell me how difficult it is to pray at Mass when they are looking after a challenging little one, I tell them that they are praying, they are offering themselves in love to God, and to their child, and to those around them, simply by being there. Love is not doing nice things or feeling nice things. True love is hard.
Now one of the reasons I’m reminding us all of this today is because the Bishops of England & Wales have just issued a statement affirming that from Pentecost Sunday onwards all Catholics must try to return to the practice of being in Church every Sunday if its at all possible. I’m glad that they’ve put this call to return to what we call “Obligation” in a very gentle way. They write for example that “It has always been the understanding of the Church that when the freedom of any Catholic to attend Mass in person is impeded for a serious reason, because of situations such as ill health, care for the sick or legitimate fear, this is not a breach of the Sunday Obligation.” They also stress, as I’ve just done, that we go to Mass not just to worship God, but also (I quote them again) “To support each other on our journey of faith, and to be a visible sign of faith in the world.” (Full text : https://www.cbcew.org.uk/spring-plenary-2022-resolution-returning-to-mass-at-pentecost/ )
In our Gospel today (John 13:31-35) Jesus said “I give you a new commandment: love one another….. just as I have loved you, you also must love one another.” Whenever I hear this, I always feel the need to remember Jesus’ saying that comes a few sentences later, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (14:15) And then I’m reminded that Jesus said all this to his disciples at the Last Supper, the time when he said “Do this in memory of me.” That’s why when people ask me why they should go to Mass, I always say, that although there are many good reasons, the most important reason of all is simply – “Because Jesus asked us to”. Do you know, I had one person online complaining to me that the Bishops were “telling us what to do.” He said indignantly that the Synodal process means “the laity should be consulted.” My reply was “They’re not telling us what to do, they are telling us what Jesus told us to do. Isn’t that their job?”
In the first part of our Gospel, Jesus says a remarkable thing. There they are gathered around the table at the Last Supper, and Jesus says that this is where God is glorified. Note this, God is glorified not in some amazing personal spiritual experience, not even in the magnificent beauty of our world, or of the Sun and the stars in the Universe. No. God is glorified as a very ordinary group of people show their love for Jesus by receiving the food he offers them and thus receiving him. So God is glorified every time we “Do this in memory of him.” What’s more, Jesus isn’t just referring to the Eucharist that he’s creating, but also to his offering of himself on the cross. So he says, “God has been glorified” in him Jesus and his disciples, that is now at the Last Supper; and also “God will glorify him very soon”, that is in the death that he will undergo the following day. And of course, Jesus teaches us that by being at Mass we celebrate our union with him and through him with God the Father which is a glory beyond our understanding. Every Mass is a celebration therefore of the “new heaven” and the “new earth” that we heard of in our 2nd Reading (Apoc 21:1-5) Every Mass whatever it might feel like is a foretaste of the day when “God will wipe away all tears” from our eyes.
But look further at the Gospel, and examine the first words there : “When Judas had gone”. This time of glory is not found when everything is happy and wonderful ,when everyone is, as it were, singing the same song in a glorious harmony. It is found instead in a time of darkness, of the imminent betrayal of Judas, and of the imminent desertion of Jesus by the eleven, who will be too scared to stand by him when the crisis comes. It is from this that we can be sure that God is glorified in us gathered at Mass to do this in memory of him, even though like the disciples we are weak people struggling to serve God and yet sometimes failing him. Love is like that isn’t it. Where can we see the greatest love in our world at the moment? In the midst of the war in Ukraine. In the struggles in Lebanon and Syria. In the famine in Ethiopia. Here, in the midst of darkness, people can be found struggling to support one another in love. Our struggles may be very small in comparison, but we too are told that when we love, however hard this may be, however dark our world may seem, there is where God’s glory can be found.
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