May 21, 2026
Thursday of the
Seventh Week of Easter
Lectionary: 300
Reading 1
Wishing to determine the truth
about why Paul was being accused by the Jews,
the commander freed him
and ordered the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin to convene.
Then he brought Paul down and made him stand before them.
Paul was aware that some were Sadducees and some Pharisees,
so he called out before the Sanhedrin,
"My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees;
I am on trial for hope in the resurrection of the dead."
When he said this,
a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and Sadducees,
and the group became divided.
For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection
or angels or spirits,
while the Pharisees acknowledge all three.
A great uproar occurred,
and some scribes belonging to the Pharisee party
stood up and sharply argued,
"We find nothing wrong with this man.
Suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?"
The dispute was so serious that the commander,
afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them,
ordered his troops to go down and rescue Paul from their midst
and take him into the compound.
The following night the Lord stood by him and said, "Take courage.
For just as you have borne witness to my cause in Jerusalem,
so you must also bear witness in Rome."
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
16:1-2a and 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11
R. (1) Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, "My Lord are you."
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
Because you will not abandon my soul to the nether world,
nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.
R. Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
May they all be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that the world may believe that you sent me, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying:
"I pray not only for these,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me.
And I have given them the glory you gave me,
so that they may be one, as we are one,
I in them and you in me,
that they may be brought to perfection as one,
that the world may know that you sent me,
and that you loved them even as you loved me.
Father, they are your gift to me.
I wish that where I am they also may be with me,
that they may see my glory that you gave me,
because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Righteous Father, the world also does not know you,
but I know you, and they know that you sent me.
I made known to them your name and I will make it known,
that the love with which you loved me
may be in them and I in them."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052126.cfm
Commentary on Acts
22:30; 23:6-11
We are now coming to the end of Paul’s Third Missionary
Journey. Events are moving very fast as we have to finish Acts in the next
three days! And a great deal is happening, much of which will have to be passed
over. To fully understand, it might be a very good idea to take up a New
Testament and read the full text of the last eight chapters of Acts.
As we begin today’s reading let us be filled in a little on
what has happened between yesterday’s reading and today’s. After bidding a
tearful farewell to his fellow-Christians in Ephesus, Paul and his companions
began their journey back to Palestine, making a number of brief stops on the
way—Cos, Rhodes, Patara. They by-passed Cyprus and landed at Tyre in Phoenicia.
They stayed there for a week, during which time the brethren begged Paul not to
go on to Jerusalem. They knew there would be trouble. But there was no turning
back for Paul and again there was an emotional parting on the beach.
As Paul moved south, there was a stop at Ptolemais, where
they greeted the community. Then it was on to Caesarea where Paul stayed in the
house of Philip, the deacon, now called “the evangelist” (earlier we saw him do
great evangelising work in Samaria and he was the one who converted the
Ethiopian eunuch). Here too there was an experience in which Paul was warned by
a prophet in the community of coming suffering. Again they all begged him not
to go on, but he replied:
…I am ready not only to be bound but even to die in
Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.
This was accepted as God’s will, and they let him go.
When they arrived in Jerusalem they received a warm welcome
from the community there and went to pay a formal visit to James, the leader in
the Jerusalem church. They were very happy to hear of all that Paul had done,
but they were also concerned (and their concern would seem to indicate that
there were some in the city who had not fully accepted the non-application of
Jewish law for Gentiles).
The local Jews (including, it seems, the Christians) would
have heard how Paul, also a Jew, had been telling Jews in gentile territory to
“abandon Moses”, that is, he was not requiring them to circumcise their
children or observe other Jewish practices. Some suggested a tactic for Paul to
assuage the feelings of these people. On behalf of four members of the
Jerusalem community, he was to make the customary payment for the sacrifices
offered at the termination of the Nazirite vow (see Numbers 6:1-24) in order to
impress favourably the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem with his high regard for
the Mosaic Law. Since Paul himself had once made such a vow (when he was
leaving Corinth, Acts 18:18), his respect for the law would be publicly known.
Paul agreed with this suggestion and did as he was asked.
However, as the seven days stipulated were coming to an end,
Paul was spotted by some Jews who had known him in Ephesus. A mob rushed into
the Temple and seized him, and might have harmed him, if the Roman commander
had not seen the riot. He rescued Paul, then arrested him and put him in chains
and thus out of the reach of those wanting to harm him.
It was only after the arrest that the commander realised the
Greek-speaking Paul was not an Egyptian rebel. Paul then asked to be allowed to
address the crowd and, in a longish speech, told the assembled Jews the story
of his conversion on the road to Damascus (the second time the story is told in
Acts; it will be told again in chapter 26). At the end of the speech, the crowd
bayed for his blood and Paul was about to be flogged in order to find out why
the Jews wanted him executed. At this point, Paul revealed to the centurion
that he was a Roman citizen and that, unlike the garrison commander who had
bought his citizenship, he had been born one. This created great alarm among
his captors and he was released.
The Roman commander then ordered a meeting of the Sanhedrin
to be convened so that Paul could address them. While those of the high
priestly line were mainly Sadducees, the Sanhedrin also now included quite a
number of Pharisees. This council was the ruling body of the Jews. Its court
and decisions were respected by the Roman authorities. Roman approval was
needed, however, in cases of capital punishment (as happened in the case of
Jesus). Paul’s being brought before the Sanhedrin was already foretold by Jesus
to his disciples (see Matt 10:17-18). Paul, in time, will appear before
“councils, governors and kings”.
He began by telling them that everything he had done was with
a perfectly clear conscience. On hearing this, the high priest Ananias ordered
that Paul be struck in the mouth. It was not unlike his Master being struck on
the face during his trial. Paul hit back verbally:
…God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. (Acts
23:2)
He said this because, although Ananias was supposedly
sitting in judgement according to Mosaic Law, he was breaking the law by
striking the accused. Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that Ananias was
actually assassinated in AD 66 at the beginning of the First Jewish Revolt.
When Paul is accused of reviling the high priest, he said he did not realise
Ananias was the high priest and apologised.
It is at this point that today’s reading begins—and it is
one of the most dramatic scenes in Acts. Paul knew his audience and he decided
at the very beginning to make a preemptive strike. He professed loudly and with
pride that he was a Pharisee, knowing that his audience consisted of both
Pharisees and Sadducees.
Addressing his words specially to the Pharisees, he said:
I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of
the dead.
That was not quite the whole story, of course, as he made no
mention of Christ, but it immediately put him on the side of his
fellow-Pharisees. As Paul had told the Corinthians in one of his letters, if
Christ was not risen from the dead, neither could we rise and there would be no
basis for our faith. The hope of a future life was at the very heart of his
Christian preaching.
That, of course, is not what the Pharisees heard. They
immediately latched on to the fact that Paul, as a fellow-Pharisee held a
belief that was denied by the Sadducees. The Sadducees only accepted as divine
revelation the first five books of the Bible, what we call the Pentateuch. The
resurrection of the body (in 2 Maccabees) and the doctrine of angels (in the
book of Tobit) did not become part of Jewish teaching until a comparatively
late date. On both these issues, however, Paul (a Pharisee himself) and the
Pharisees were in full agreement.
In the first five books of the Old Testament, there is no
mention of a future resurrection, nor spirits, nor angels. It was on the basis
of this belief that the Sadducees had challenged Jesus about the fate of a
woman who had married seven brothers (see Luke 20:27-38 and Matt 22:25-32). If
there is a resurrection, which of the seven would be her husband? For those who
did not believe in life after death, the question was nonsense.
Paul’s words on resurrection immediately diverted attention
from him to this contentious dividing point between the Pharisees and the
Sadducees.
All of a sudden the Pharisees made an about-turn saying:
We find nothing wrong with this man.
And, in a deliberate provocation to the Sadducees who also
did not believe in angels, the Pharisees said:
What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?
This could be a reference to Paul’s account to them earlier
of his experience on the road to Damascus.
All objectivity was forgotten and the Pharisees, despite
their earlier protestations, sided with Paul, ‘their man’, and a brawl ensued.
It got so serious—and, remember, these were all ‘religious’ men!—that the
tribune, fearing Paul would be torn to pieces, came to his rescue and put him
back in the fortress.
That night, Paul received a vision in which he was assured
that he would be protected in Jerusalem because it was the Lord’s wish that he
give witness to the gospel in Rome.
Perhaps Paul’s behaviour in this situation is a good example
of Jesus’ advice to his disciples to be simple as doves and as wise as
serpents! Paul was more than ready to suffer for his Lord, but he was no
pushover.
While we, too, are to be prepared to give witness to our
faith even with the sacrifice of our lives, and never to indulge in any form of
violence against those who attack us, we are not asked to go out of our way to
invite persecution or physical attacks. That is not the meaning of the
injunction to carry our cross. Jesus himself often took steps to avoid trouble.
Joan of Arc defended herself as did Thomas More and, indeed
as Jesus himself did during his trial:
If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I
have spoken rightly, why do you strike me? (John 18:23)
But, like them, we will try never to evade death or any
other form of hostility by compromising the central teaching of our faith.
Comments Off
Commentary on John
17:20-26
In this final part of Jesus’ prayer during his discourse to
his disciples at the Last Supper, Jesus now prays for all those who came to
believe in Christ as Lord through the influence of these very disciples down
through the ages. Each one of us is among those Jesus is praying for here.
In this prayer, Jesus prays above all for unity among his
disciples as the most effective sign of witness. As he had told his disciples
earlier on in the discourse:
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if
you have love for one another. (John 13:35)
He now prays that we may display the same unity among
ourselves and with Jesus as that which binds Jesus and the Father. It is
through the love that Christians, coming as they do from so many ethnic groups
and all classes of people, show for each other that they give the most
effective witness to the message of Christ. He asks:
…that they may become completely one, so that the world
may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
It is said that, in the early Church, people marvelled, “See
those Christians, how they love each other.” In a world divided along so
many lines, people were amazed to see Jews and Greeks, men and women, slaves
and freemen, rich and poor sharing a common community life in love and
forgiveness and mutual support. It clearly would lead people to ask what
was the secret of this group.
Is that the witness that we are giving today? What do people
see when they look at our parishes? What do they see when they look at our
families? What are they to think of the painful divisions of so many groups who
claim Jesus as their Lord? How can we maintain such divisions in the face
of these words of Jesus?
Obviously, we all have much to think and pray about
regarding our ‘spiritual’ life and the impact we make in drawing people to
Christ (and that includes bringing back many who have left in confusion and
disillusionment).
So let us make our own the last words of Jesus’ prayer
today:
I made your name known to them [his disciples],
and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be
in them and I in them.
Comments Off
https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/e1075g/
Thursday,
May 21, 2026
Easter Weekday
Opening Prayer
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and Father of all people,
we believe in you and we know
that you loved Jesus with a deep and trusting, lasting love. Let your Holy
Spirit pour out this love into the hearts of all those who believe in Jesus,
our Savior and shepherd.
Let this love unite us in
one common bond of understanding and respect of one another and let that love
dispose us to live for one another and to serve one another for the sake of
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Gospel Reading - John 17: 20-26
Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said: I pray not only
for these but also for those who through their teaching will come to believe in
me. May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so
that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent
me.
I have given them the glory you gave
to me, that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, may
they be so perfected in unity that the world will recognize that it was you who
sent me and that you have loved them as you have loved me.
Father, I want those you have given me to be with me
where I am, so that they may always see my glory which you have given me
because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Father, Upright One,
the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that
you have sent me.
I have made your name known
to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you
loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them.
Reflection
Today’s Gospel presents to
us the third and last part of the Priestly Prayer, in which Jesus looks toward
the future and manifests his great desire for unity among us, his disciples,
and that all may remain in the love which unifies, because without love and
without unity we do not deserve credibility.
•
John 17: 20-23: So that the world may believe it
was you who sent me. Jesus extends the horizon and prays to the Father: I pray
not only for these but also for those who through their teaching will come to
believe in me. May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in
you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you
who sent me. Behold, here emerges the great concern of Jesus for unity which
should exist in the communities. Unity does not mean uniformity, but rather to
remain in love, in spite of tensions and conflicts. A love which unifies to the
point of creating among all a profound unity, like the unity which exists
between Jesus and the Father. The unity in love revealed in the Trinity is the
model for the communities. For this, through love among persons, the
communities reveal to the world the most profound message of Jesus. People said
of the first Christians: “Look how they love one another!” The present-day
division among the three religions which came from Abraham is really tragic:
the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims. And even more tragic is the division
among us Christians who say that we believe in Jesus. If we are divided, we do
not deserve credibility. Ecumenism is in the centre of the last prayer of Jesus
to the Father. It is his testament. To be a Christian and not be ecumenical is
a contradiction. It means to contradict the last Will of Jesus.
•
John 17: 24-26: So that the love with which you
loved me may be in them. Jesus does not want to remain alone. He says: Father,
I want those you have given me to be with me where I am so that they may always
see my glory which you have given me, because you loved me before the
foundation of the world. Jesus is happy when we are all together with him. He
wants his disciples to have the same experience of the Father which he had. He
wants us to know the Father and that he knows us. In the Bible, the word to
know is not limited to a rational theoretic knowledge but presupposes the
experience of the presence of God living in love with the persons of the
community.
•
That they may be one as we are one. (Unity and
Trinity in the Gospel of John) The Gospel of John helps us to understand the
mystery of the Trinity, the communion among the three Divine Persons: the
Father, the Son and the Spirit. Of the four Gospels, John is the one who
stresses more the profound unity among the Father, the Son and the Spirit. From
the text of John (Jn 17: 6-8) we see that the mission of the Son is the supreme
manifestation of the love of the Father. And this unity between the Father and
the Son makes Jesus exclaim: The Father and I are one (Jn 10: 30). Between the
Son and the Father there is such an intense unity that one who sees the face of
one also sees the face of the other. And fulfilling this mission of unity
received from the Father, Jesus reveals the Spirit. The spirit of Truth comes
from the Father (Jn 15: 26). At the petition of the Son (Jn 14: 16), the Father
sends the Spirit to each one of us in such a way that he will remain with us,
encouraging us and giving us strength. The Spirit also comes to us from the Son
(Jn 16: 7-8). Thus, the Spirit of Truth, who journeys with us, is the
communication of the profound unity which exists between the Father and the Son
(Jn 15: 26-27). The Spirit cannot communicate a truth which is different from
the Truth of the Son. Everything which is in relationship with the mystery of
the Son, the Spirit makes it known to us (Jn 16: 13-14). This experience of the
unity in God was very strong in the communities of the Beloved Disciple. The
love which unites the Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit allows us to
experience God through union with the persons in a community of love. This was
also the proposal of the community, where love should be the sign of God’s
presence in the midst of the community (Jn 13: 34-35). And this love constructs
unity in the community (Jn 17: 21). They looked at the unity in God in order to
understand the unity among them.
For Personal Confrontation
•
Bishop Don Pedro Casaldáliga said: “The Trinity
is truly the best community”. In the community of which you form part, can one
perceive some human sign of the Divine Trinity?
•
Ecumenism: Am I ecumenical?
Concluding Prayer
Lord, you will teach me the path of life, unbounded
joy in your presence, at your right-hand delight forever. (Ps 16: 11)
