May 25, 2025
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Lectionary: 57
When the Ascension of the Lord is celebrated the
following Sunday, the second reading and Gospel from the Seventh Sunday of
Easter may be read on the Sixth Sunday of Easter.
Reading I
Some who had come down from Judea were instructing the
brothers,
“Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice,
you cannot be saved.”
Because there arose no little dissension and debate
by Paul and Barnabas with them,
it was decided that Paul, Barnabas, and some of the others
should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders
about this question.
The apostles and elders, in agreement with the whole church,
decided to choose representatives
and to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.
The ones chosen were Judas, who was called Barsabbas,
and Silas, leaders among the brothers.
This is the letter delivered by them:
“The apostles and the elders, your brothers,
to the brothers in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia
of Gentile origin: greetings.
Since we have heard that some of our number
who went out without any mandate from us
have upset you with their teachings
and disturbed your peace of mind,
we have with one accord decided to choose representatives
and to send them to you along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul,
who have dedicated their lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So we are sending Judas and Silas
who will also convey this same message by word of mouth:
‘It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us
not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities,
namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols,
from blood, from meats of strangled animals,
and from unlawful marriage.
If you keep free of these,
you will be doing what is right. Farewell.’”
Responsorial Psalm
R (4) O God, let all the nations praise you!
or:
R Alleluia.
May God have pity on us and bless us;
may he let
his face shine upon us.
So may your way be known upon earth;
among all
nations, your salvation.
R O God, let all the nations praise you!
or:
R Alleluia.
May the nations be glad and exult
because you
rule the peoples in equity;
the nations
on the earth you guide.
R O God, let all the nations praise you!
or:
R Alleluia.
May the peoples praise you, O God;
may all the
peoples praise you!
May God bless us,
and may all
the ends of the earth fear him!
R O God, let all the nations praise you!
or:
R Alleluia.
Reading II
The angel took me in spirit to a great, high mountain
and showed me the holy city Jerusalem
coming down out of heaven from God.
It gleamed with the splendor of God.
Its radiance was like that of a precious stone,
like jasper, clear as crystal.
It had a massive, high wall,
with twelve gates where twelve angels were stationed
and on which names were inscribed,
the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites.
There were three gates facing east,
three north, three south, and three west.
The wall of the city had twelve courses of stones as its foundation,
on which were inscribed the twelve names
of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
I saw no temple in the city
for its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb.
The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it,
for the glory of God gave it light,
and its lamp was the Lamb.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord,
and my Father will love him and we will come to him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words;
yet the word you hear is not mine
but that of the Father who sent me.
“I have told you this while I am with you.
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
You heard me tell you,
‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’
If you loved me,
you would rejoice that I am going to the Father;
for the Father is greater than I.
And now I have told you this before it happens,
so that when it happens you may believe.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052525.cfm
Note: When the Ascension of Our Lord is celebrated on the
following Sunday, the Second Reading (Rev 22:12-14,16-17,20) and the Gospel
(John 17:20-26) of the Seventh Sunday of Easter may be used today.
Commentary on Acts
15:1-2,22-29; Revelation 21:10-14,22-23; John 14:23-29
Two sides of Christian living are reflected in today’s
readings. The Gospel radiates a calmness and peace and reassurance that we all
need so much. However, the First Reading reflects the areas of difference and
conflict that are bound to arise when even Christians come face to face with
new problems and new questions for the articulation of their faith. Such
conflicts, when properly handled, are necessary, even desirable, if we are to
have a deeper understanding of the real meaning of our faith in a changing
world.
God speaks to us through the changing situations in which
the world finds itself. So, at first sight the answers are not always clear.
There are different interpretations and even disagreements until we find where
the Spirit is leading us. We have conflicts like that today in questions about
married priests, women clergy, marriage and family planning, death and dying,
sexual relationships and sexual orientations, and other complex issues.
Yet both calm and conflict have something in common. They
remind us of the different ways in which God speaks to us. Through his Spirit,
which Jesus promises to send after he has left his disciples in the flesh, he
will continue to be present to us and to be with his community, the Church. He
says:
Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will
love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
The proof of our love for Jesus is that we keep his word,
and in turn we will experience the love of the Father, and the Father and Jesus
will make their home in us. If we only had those words from Jesus and nothing
else, they would be enough to guide us through life and point us in the right
direction.
Love is a Verb
Love, as has been said, is not a feeling—it is a verb. For example, we might
hear someone say: “There is no love in our marriage any more”; or, “There is no
love in our family… our office… our group.” What is really being said is that
there are no feelings of ‘love’ for the simple reason that there is no love
going on. There can be no love (feeling) without loving (doing). And anyone can
start the process.
For Jesus, love—by which he means loving—is achieved by
keeping his word. The ‘word’ of Jesus must not be limited to what we were
taught as commandments or doctrines or moral behaviour, although it obviously
includes these. The ‘word’ of Jesus embraces everything we know about him
through the Scripture—his words, his actions, his relationships with people of
all kinds, the guiding principles of his life and his values and attitudes.
Above all, it includes his blueprint for the setting up of the Kingdom.
Jesus is the Word of God not only because of what comes from
his lips, but from the whole impact of his life—from his birth in an animals’
shelter at Bethlehem to the appalling last moments of agony and humiliation on
the Cross. To ‘keep Jesus’ words’ is to embrace all of that, to identify with
it and make it real in the particular context of my own life.
We may say, too, that the ‘word’ of Jesus also comes to us
from all our interactions and experiences within the Christian community where
Jesus still speaks to us. It comes to us through the whole of creation of which
Jesus is the Head and with which he identifies through his Creator Father.
Nice and Soothing
The words of today’s Gospel are relatively abstract. They sound so nice and
soothing, which is perhaps why they are so easy to digest. But life is not
abstract; it constantly puts us face to face with the nitty-gritty. The Church,
too, is not abstract although we often speak impersonally of it in phrases such
as “Why doesn’t the Church…?”; “What does the Church say…?” and so on.
The Church is much more than an organisation founded 2,000
years ago by Jesus Christ. It is, as the Second Vatican Council emphasised, a
people. It is a community—at times a rather fractious, disjointed, flawed
community—whose members in varying degrees share their faith and hope, their
love and caring. It is a community which, with and in Jesus, is called to work
for the transformation of our world of sin and weakness, to make it, in the
words of Revelation today, a city where:
…the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.
It is through this community, with all its faults (and they
are many), that the Spirit continues to speak as it did in the days of the
first disciples. That Spirit of the Father and Jesus speaks not only through
the pope, bishops and priests, but can and does speak through each and every
one of the members of Christ’s Body—old or young, educated or illiterate, men
or women, friends or enemies.
Today, bishops and priests are urged to listen to each other
and to listen to the whole community. In its Decree on the Lay Apostolate
(paragraph 10), the Second Vatican Council said that the laity should:
“…develop the habit of bringing before the ecclesial
community their own problems, world problems, and questions regarding men’s
(sic) salvation, to examine them together and to solve them by general
discussion.”
Working Together
We may think this is something new, but we see it at work right from the
beginning of the Church’s existence. We have a lovely example in today’s First
Reading from the Acts of the Apostles where there was a new problem arising in
these early church communities.
Many non-Jews were becoming Christians, but some of the
Jewish Christians wanted the non-Jews to observe (as they themselves continued
to do) the laws of Moses, especially the distinguishing badge (for men) of
circumcision. It was difficult for anyone from a Jewish background to accept
the abandonment of this very distinctive mark of identity for God’s people.
However, some of the Apostles and others working among
non-Jews were opposed to this.* After a long
discussion, which, we may imagine by reading between the lines, must have been
quite heated at times, the leaders of the Church agreed that non-Jewish
converts did not have to observe Jewish laws, especially that of circumcision.
They did ask for some exceptions, namely, that all Christians continue to
abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from animals that had been
strangled and from extra-marital sexual activities or marriages against
prevailing Jewish law.
These were things that even non-Jews were expected to
observe when living among Jews. Promiscuity was something taken lightly in
Greek culture and often connected with temple prostitutes. However, the
imposition of some dietary restrictions (which have been long since abandoned)
was surely to avoid unnecessarily hurting the sensitivities of Jewish converts.
Paul speaks about this in his Letter to the Romans (chap 14).
The Church leaders made it clear that their decision was not
theirs alone. In their letter to the “gentile belivers”, they said:
…it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…
This was only the implementation of Jesus’ own words that
his authority would be passed over to the community of his followers:
…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven [i.e.
acknowledged as binding by God]…
And again:
…the Advocate [Paraclete], the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name [it happened at Pentecost],
will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.
And He still continues to teach us in our own times.
Spirit-Filled
This decision was reached ultimately by consensus, because many of the
community expressed their opinion and shared their experiences. The leaders,
then as now with a bias for retaining the status quo, recognised the presence
of the Holy Spirit in the arguments of those who had been called back from
their mission fields and who had first-hand knowledge of the high calibre of
the new non-Jewish disciples. It was clear that the Spirit of God had entered
into these people’s hearts as much as it had into that of Jewish-born
disciples.
It was a major turning point in the development of
Christianity. It involved a ‘paradigm shift’, a radical alteration of the way
truth and reality were to be seen. It happened because some people were open to
what God was clearly saying through circumstances and experience. It is an
openness that is both valid and needed in today’s Christian communities, large
and small, and even in individual lives.
In subsequent years, Paul had constantly to warn people
against wanting to slide back to the old ways—people who wanted to re-introduce
circumcision and other items of Jewish custom. He told the Galatians:
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm,
therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Gal 5:1)
We see the same tendency in the Church today, in people who
want to turn the clock back and resurrect old customs and impose them on
others. These people tend to make the Church an end in itself. The Church is
primarily a vehicle, a means by which the experience of God’s love is extended
to the whole world. And, if the Church is to be true to the Spirit, it must
remain open to the world, for it is the world which, in the words of one
theologian, “writes the agenda for the Church”.
It was precisely because they listened to the situation of
the new non-Jewish converts that the Church realised where the Spirit was
leading it. When the Church becomes an enclosed, elitist society sitting in
unbending judgement on the rest of the world, it is no longer the Church that
Jesus founded.
Collectively and individually, we need to become aware of
the wonderful ways that the Lord can come into our lives. If we give a little
time to God each day, if we can remain completely still for even a short while,
we can experience an overpowering desire to share in the loving that is
reaching out to us from God—and then start reaching out ourselves. God wants to
share with us more and more of what he has and is. The problem is that most of
us hardly give him a chance. Loving is not only a verb; it is also a two-way
street.
________________________________________
*On the purely physical level, for an adult convert to be circumcised,
given the limitations of ancient surgical practices, would surely be a very
painful experience. On a psychological level, what would seem to non-Jews a
mutilation of the male sexual organ would surely be regarded by some very
difficult to accept.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/ec061/
Sunday,
May 25, 2025
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Opening Prayer
Shaddai, God of the mountain, You who
make of our fragile life the rock of your dwelling place, lead our mind to
strike the rock of the desert, so that water may gush to quench our thirst. May
the poverty of our feelings
cover us as with a mantle in the
darkness of the night and may it open our heart to hear the echo of silence
until the dawn,
wrapping us with the light of the new morning, may bring us,
with the spent embers of the fire of
the shepherds of the Absolute who have kept vigil for us close to the divine
Master, the flavor of the holy memory.
Lectio
The Text – John 14: 23-29
23 Jesus answered him, "If a
man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will
come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me does not
keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent
me.
25 "These things I have spoken to you,
while I am still with you. 26 But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I
give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be
troubled, neither let them be afraid. 28 You heard me say to you, 'I go away,
and I will come to you.'
If you loved me, you would have rejoiced,
because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I. 29 And now I have
told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may
believe. A Moment of Silence:
Let us allow the voice of the Word to
resonate within us.
Meditatio
Some Questions:
•
“And we will come to him and make our home with
him”: looking in our interior camp, will we find there the tent of the shekinah
(presence) of God?
•
“He who does not love me does not keep my words:
Are the words of Christ empty words for us because of our lack of love? Or
could we say that we observe them as a guide on our journey?
•
“The Holy Spirit will bring to your remembrance
all that I have said to you”: Jesus turns to the Father, but everything which
he has said and done remains with us. When will we be able to remember the
marvels which divine grace has accomplished in us? Do we receive or accept the
voice of the Spirit who suggests in our interior the meaning of all that has
taken place, that has happened?
•
“My peace I give to you: The peace of Christ is
his resurrection”: When will we be able in our life to abandon the anxiety and
the mania of doing, which draws us away from the sources of the being? God of
peace, when will we live solely from you, peace of our waiting?
•
“I have told you before it takes place, so that
when it does take place, you may believe”: Before it takes place... Jesus likes
to explain to us beforehand what is going to happen, so that the events do not
take us by surprise, unprepared. But are we ready to read the signs of our
events with the words heard from him?
Key for the reading:
•
To make our home. Heaven does not have a better
place than a human heart which is in love. Because a dilated heart extends the
boundaries and all barriers of time and space disappear. To live in love is
equal to live in Heaven, to live in Him who is love, and eternal love.
• v.
23: Jesus answered him: If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father
will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
In the origin of every spiritual
experience there is always a movement forward. Take a small step, then
everything moves harmoniously. And the step to be taken is only one: If a man
loves me. Is it really possible to love God? And how is it seen that his face
is no longer among the people? To love: What does it really mean? In general,
to love for us means to wish well to one another, to be together, to make
choices to construct a future, to give oneself... to love Jesus is not the same
thing. to love him means to do as he did, not to draw back in the face of pain,
of death; to love as he did takes us very far... and it is in this love that
the word becomes daily bread to eat and life becomes Heaven because of the
Father’s presence.
•
vv. 24-25: He who does not love me does not keep
my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.
If there is no love, the consequences are disastrous. The words of Jesus can be
observed only if there is love in the heart, otherwise they remain absurd
proposals. Those words are not the words of a man, they come for the Father’s
heart who proposes to each one of us to be like Him. In life it is not so much
a question of doing things, even if they are very good. It is necessary to be
men, to be sons, to be images similar to the One who never ceases to give
Himself completely.
•
vv. 25-26: These things I have spoken to you,
while I am still with you. But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and will bring to your
remembrance all that I have said to you. To remember is an action of the
Spirit; when in our days the past is seen as something lost forever and the
future is there as something threatening to take away our joy today, only the
divine Breath in you can lead you to remember it. To remember what has been
said, every word coming from God’s mouth for you, and forgotten because of the
fact that time has gone by.
•
v. 27: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give
to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be
troubled, neither let them be afraid. The peace of Christ for us is not absence
of conflicts, serenity of life, health... but the plenitude of every good,
absence of anxiety in the face of what is going to happen. The Lord does not
assure us well-being, but the fullness of sonship in a loving adherence to his
projects which are good for us. We will possess peace, when we will have learnt
to trust in that which the Father chooses for us.
•
v. 28: You heard me say to you, ‘I go away, and
I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to
the Father; for the Father is greater than I.
•
We come back to the question of love. If you
loved me, you would have rejoiced. But what is the sense of this expression
pronounced by the Master? We could complete the phrase and say: If you loved
me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father... but since you think
of yourselves, you are sad because I am leaving, going away. The love of the
disciples is an egoistic love. They do not love Jesus because they do not think
of Him, they think of themselves. Then, the love which Jesus asks, is this
love!
•
A love capable of rejoicing because the other
will be happy. A love capable of not thinking of self as the center of all the
universe, but as a place in which one feels open to give and to be able to
receive: not in exchange, but as the “effect” of the gift received.
•
v. 29: I have told you before it takes place, so
when it does take place, you may believe. Jesus instructs his own because he
knows that they will remain confused and will be slow in understanding. His
words do not vanish, they remain as a presence in the world, treasures of
understanding in faith. An encounter with the Absolute who is always and for
always in favor of man.
Reflection:
•
Love: a magic and ancient word as old as the
world, a familiar word which is born in the horizon of every man in the moment
in which he is called into existence. A word written in his human fibers as
origin and end, as an instrument of peace, as bread and gift, as himself, as
others, as God. A word entrusted to history through our history of every day.
•
Love, a pact which has always had one name
alone: man. Yes, because love coincides with man: love is the air that he
breathes, love is the food which is given to him, love is the rest to which he
entrusts himself, love is the bond of union which makes of him a land of
encounter. That love with which God has seen in his creation and has given: “It
is something very good.” And he has not taken back the commitment taken when
man made of himself a rejection more than a gift, a slap more than a caress, a
stone thrown more than a silent tear.
•
He has loved even more with the eyes and the
heart of the Son, up to the end. This man who became a burning torch of sin,
the Father has redeemed him, again and solely out of love, in the Fire of the
Spirit.
Oratio
Psalm 37,23-31
The steps of a man are from the Lord,
and he establishes him in whose
way he delights; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong,
for the Lord is the stay of his
hand. I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous
forsaken or his children begging bread. He is ever giving liberally and
lending,
and his children become a blessing.
Depart from evil, and do good; so shall you abide forever. For the Lord loves
justice; he will not forsake his saints.
The righteous shall be preserved for ever,
but the children of the wicked shall be
cut off. The righteous shall possess the land, and dwell upon it forever.
The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his
tongue speaks justice. The law of his God is in his heart; his steps do not
slip.
Contemplatio
I see you, Lord, dwelling in my days through
your word which accompanies me in my more intense moments, when my love for you
becomes courageous, audacious and I do not give up in the face of what I feel
that does not belong to me. that Spirit which is like the wind: blows where it
wants and his voice is not heard, that Spirit has become space in me, and now I
can tell you that he is like a dear friend with whom to remember. To go back to
remember the words said, to the lived events, to the presence perceived while
on the way, does good to the heart.
I feel profoundly this
indwelling every time that in silence one of your phrases comes to mind, one of
your invitations, one of your words of compassion, your silence. The nights of
your prayer allow me to pray to the Father and to find peace. Lord, tenderness
concealed in the pleads of my gestures, grant me to treasure all that you are:
a scroll which is explained in which it is easy to understand the sense of my
existence.
May my words be the dwelling place of your
words, may my hunger be your dwelling, bread of life, may my pain be the empty
tomb and the folded shroud so that everything that you want may be
accomplished, up to the last breath. I love you, Lord, my rock.
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