that the Church celebrates the Resurrection for 50 days, from the Easter still celebrating Easter, the Church provides 3 readings from the New

Transcription

1 Homily for 6 th Sunday of Easter (Acts 15: 1-2, 22-29; Rev 21: 10-14, 22-23; Jn 14:23-29) It is easy to forget that the celebration of Easter is not meant to be a one-day event. The Lord s Resurrection to new life is of such importance that the Church celebrates the Resurrection for 50 days, from the Easter Vigil until Pentecost Sunday. As a way to help us remember that we are still celebrating Easter, the Church provides 3 readings from the New Testament during the Sundays of the Easter Season to show why the Resurrection continues to matter even though this event happened more than 2000 years ago. During the Easter Season, the First Reading at Sunday Mass is always from the Acts of the Apostles. Written by St. Luke as a continuation of the Gospel that bears his name, the Acts of the Apostles gives us a glimpse into the lives of the First Christians. While many conjure up nostalgic daydreams of the Early Church as one where everyone got along, where the Church was not governed by rules and doctrines established by the Church s hierarchy and who embodied the perfect ideal of what Jesus wanted his Church to be, a reading of the Acts of the Apostles shows us that division, conflict, persecution and heated

2 debates and disagreements were prevalent realities in the lives of the First Christians. The reading we heard from today marks a very important moment in the life of the Church: The very first Church Council, where the first pope, St Peter, and the first bishops gathered to discuss conflicts and challenges that had arisen in the infant Church. Though the Council of Jerusalem appears from a solely human point of view to be more akin to a debate on religious and cultural matters, this council was actually an event when the Holy Spirit sought to speak to God s People through the decisions and teachings of St Peter and the Apostles. The letter which the Apostles asked Sts Paul, Barnabas, Barsabbas and Silas to read in the new Christian communities concerning the outcome of the Council of Jerusalem, shows how the Holy Spirit sought to create ways to bring more and more people to experience salvation through holy baptism by removing obstacles that would prevent them from seeking to enter the Church, while at the same time establishing prohibitions to compel people to stop doing any sinful activities that would jeopardize their salvation.

3 While male circumcision and abstaining from certain foods was decreed by the Council as being no longer obligatory for Christians, the Apostles taught that there remained the need to refrain from food sacrifice to idols and that had been strangled and had blood in it (eating these foods was scandalous and offensive to Jewish Christians) and from fornication, that is sex before marriage, which was very common and acceptable in gentile nations. Notice how today these regulations have both changed and remained the same: it would not be considered sinful or overly scandalous to eat meat with blood, but the Church continues to teach the eternal and unchangeable truth that fornication is a sin, as sexual activity can only ever been seen as holy in God s sight and orientated to the good of humanity when this expression of conjugal love is shared between a married man and a married woman, and never with someone who is not one s spouse. Our second reading during the Easter Season will be from the Book of Revelation. It is within this book that we are given a glimpse of what the Church will eventually become. We read not only of the trials,

4 persecutions and world wide calamites that will occur against the People of God before Christ returns in Glory, but also of the great victory of our God and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth through the life giving power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. John gives us a description of what we can hope to experience in this new heaven and new earth: he speaks of the end of all things as culminating in the descent of the Heavenly Jerusalem upon a recreated world. You will notice in his description that the city has the same dimensions of the earthly Jerusalem that St. John knew before its destruction in 70 AD. But the most notably feature about this New Jerusalem is the absence of its Temple. At the end of time, the only temple that will be needed is that of God himself. The true temple of the new heaven and the new earth will be the Holy Trinity, where God the Almighty Father, Jesus Christ the Lamb of God and the Holy Spirit, true light and life of the world, will reign and all who believe God will be able to approach Him without any barriers or limitations barring the way. The Church, glorified and washed clean of every sin and vice, will know perfect communion with God and have

5 direct access to the Lord, knowing a love and peace that nothing in this world can give. Finally, the Sundays of the Easter Season will allow us to encounter Jesus Christ in the Gospels, most especially in the Gospel of St. John. For the last number of Sundays we have heard how the Apostles were slowly beginning to believe in the Lord s Resurrection and realize the monumental task ahead of them in proclaiming this most paradoxical of messages: That a man, who is also God, was killed on a tree, but has now risen from the dead and offers eternal salvation to all who believe in Him and accept baptism as the way to become a member of his Mystical Body, the Church. This message is simply too overwhelming for human beings to proclaim of their own. Had the Apostles tried to proclaim this message without assistance from on high, the Gospel would have disappeared long ago and Jesus be remembered as but one more interesting person in human history.

6 We have gathered for the Holy Mass today because we believe the Gospel message is true; for it is not a man made message but one that comes from The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, the one who has brought countless souls to believe in Jesus Christ and become living stones, that is, spirited filled disciples of the Catholic Church. It is in the Church of the here and now, the Church that we presently journey within, that we continually invoke the Holy Spirit to transform and purify. Without the Holy Spirit, our Church would have either selfdestructed because of the sinfulness and inadequacies of her members or have been swept away by the countless persecutions the Church has faced and continues to face at this very moment. The Holy Spirit is the one who continues to teach us and lead us to love God free of mediocrity and indifference and to work with Him in proclaiming the glory of Jesus resurrection to a world that is always in danger of spiritually dying from drinking the poison of sin. These 50 days of Easter can pass by so very quickly. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us savor what remains of this sacred season and be courageous to proclaim the Lord s resurrection at all times.