May 29, 2025
Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Lectionary: 294
Reading I
Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.
There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus,
who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla
because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.
He went to visit them and, because he practiced the same trade,
stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.
Every sabbath, he entered into discussions in the synagogue,
attempting to convince both Jews and Greeks.
When Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia,
Paul began to occupy himself totally with preaching the word,
testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus.
When they opposed him and reviled him,
he shook out his garments and said to them,
“Your blood be on your heads!
I am clear of responsibility.
From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”
So he left there and went to a house
belonging to a man named Titus Justus, a worshiper of God;
his house was next to a synagogue.
Crispus, the synagogue official, came to believe in the Lord
along with his entire household, and many of the Corinthians
who heard believed and were baptized.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (see
2b) The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has
done wondrous deeds;
His right hand has won victory for him,
his holy
arm.
R. The Lord has revealed to
the nations his saving power.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The LORD has made his salvation known:
in the sight
of the nations he has revealed his justice.
He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness
toward the
house of Israel.
R. The Lord has revealed to
the nations his saving power.
or:
R. Alleluia.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the
salvation by our God.
Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;
break into
song; sing praise.
R. The Lord has revealed to
the nations his saving power.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I will not leave you orphans, says the Lord;
I will come back to you, and your hearts will rejoice.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said to his disciples:
“A little while and you will no longer see me,
and again a little while later and you will see me.”
So some of his disciples said to one another,
“What does this mean that he is saying to us,
‘A little while and you will not see me,
and again a little while and you will see me,’
and ‘Because I am going to the Father’?”
So they said, “What is this ‘little while’ of which he speaks?
We do not know what he means.”
Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them,
“Are you discussing with one another what I said,
‘A little while and you will not see me,
and again a little while and you will see me’?
Amen, amen, I say to you,
you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices;
you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052925-thursday.cfm
Note: This Mass, also known as ‘Thursday Before Ascension
Sunday’, is celebrated in those countries where the feast of our Lord’s
Ascension is moved to the Sunday of Week 7 of Easter. For the Ascension Day
reflection, see this coming Sunday’s Scripture commentary.
Commentary on Acts
18:1-8
Paul now has moved to the city of Corinth in southern
Greece. As we have already mentioned, compared to Athens, it did not at first
sight seem a very promising missionary area, given its highly immoral
reputation. But it did have a large Jewish community to which Paul—as was his
custom—first directed his efforts. He always felt that, as God’s people, the
religious Jews should be the first to hear the message of the gospel.
Soon after he arrived he met a Jew named Aquila. Aquila was
originally from Pontus, a province lying along the Black Sea between Bithynia
and Armenia. But he had recently arrived from Italy with his wife, Priscilla,
also a Jew. Priscilla is a diminutive form of Prisca, a name by which she is
known in some of the Pauline letters. Since no mention is made of a conversion,
and since they immediately became partners with Paul in his missionary work, we
can presume they were already Christians. Very likely, they had converted while
in Rome. Both of them were to become valuable assistants in his work.
They had had to leave Rome because the emperor Claudius (AD
41-54, around whom Robert Graves’ book I, Claudius is centred)
had ordered all Jews to leave Rome around the year 49 or 50. The contemporary
historian Suetonius gives as the reason “their [the Jews] continual tumults
instigated by Chrestus” (a common misspelling of ‘Christ’). He presumably is referring
to conflicts over Christ’s Messiahship between Jews and those who had become
Christians. The order was effective, but did not last. Once again, Providence
was guiding people unknowingly in Paul’s direction.
Like Paul himself, Aquila was a tent-maker. Paul moved in
with this couple and joined them in their tent-making work. Paul was always
proud of his trade and boasted that he supported himself by his own hands. Even
though Paul more than once insisted on the missionary’s right to be supported
by those among whom he evangelised, he himself insisted on supporting himself.
He said that he did not want to be a burden on anyone, and it proved his
singleness of purpose—he was no sponger. Only from the Christians of Philippi
did he accept help. He recommended that his followers should imitate his
example, supplying their own needs and taking care of the needy.
In the beginning, Paul went every Sabbath day to the
synagogue and entered into discussions about Jesus Christ and the message of
the Gospel:
Every Sabbath he would argue in the synagogue and would
try to convince Jews and Greeks.
“Greeks” here presumably means Gentiles who were attracted
to the Jewish faith and attended the synagogue.
It was at this point that Silas and Timothy came down from
Macedonia. When he was still in Athens, Paul had instructed them to join him
there, but it is likely he had then sent them back to check on the
churches—perhaps Silas to Philippi and Timothy to Thessalonica. It would have
been about this time, too, that Paul wrote his two letters to the Christians in
Thessalonica. They are his earliest letters to churches (and historically the
first books of our New Testament to be written).
As soon as Silas and Timothy arrived, Paul devoted his time
entirely to preaching the Word and he put aside his tent-making for a while. He
was speaking mainly to Jews, proclaiming to them that Jesus was the
long-awaited Messiah. This was usually the main theme of Paul’s preaching to
Jews.
However, as had happened in other places, they rejected his
message and abused him. He symbolically then broke off relations by shaking out
his garments in front of them:
Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now
on I will go to the gentiles.
He said this to them, using language found in the Old
Testament and meaning that the Jews must take full responsibility for the
consequences of their choice. He now felt free of his former responsibility to
preach to them, and would instead devote his energies to the Gentiles. Among
these he would have great success. The Gentiles in this seedy port town proved
far more responsive than the Jews in the intellectual centre that was Athens.
Paul now moved in with a man called Titus Justus, described
as a “worshiper of God”, which would mean he was an uncircumcised Gentile who
attended the synagogue. His house (ironically for Paul!) was next to the (now
hostile) synagogue.
However, there was a surprise conversion when Crispus, who
was no less than the president of the synagogue, together with all his
household, became Christians. It was the beginning of many conversions among
Corinthians.
As we read these lines we can see the hand of God working so
clearly and so unexpectedly among many people. Corinth, the city of sin, proved
a far more fertile soil for the Gospel than sophisticated Athens. And it was
the persecution of Jews in faraway Rome that brought Paul to meet two of his
most loyal assistants, Aquila and Priscilla. As we have said and seen so often
in this story, God writes straight with very crooked lines. May we be able to
see God’s hand as clearly in our own daily experiences.
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Commentary on John
16:16-20
As Jesus continues to speak to his disciples at the Last
Supper and briefs them on what is coming, they are puzzled when he says:
A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again
a little while, and you will see me.
They start mumbling among themselves asking what on earth
Jesus is talking about. Seeing and not seeing and seeing again and “a little
while”. To us it is clear enough that Jesus is referring to his coming
suffering and death and his resurrection.
Jesus still does not spell it out clearly, but he does warn
them that they:
…will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you
will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.
Jesus’ passion, which will cause them to flee in fear of
their lives, will be a traumatic experience. All their beliefs in Jesus as
Messiah and Saviour turn to ashes. But there will be others (“the world”) who
will be overjoyed over Jesus’ arrest and execution.
The disciples, though, are not to worry because their “pain
will turn into joy” with the dawn of the Resurrection and all that implies. In
their own way, the disciples will share the passion of Jesus, as all their
hopes and expectations are emptied and turned to dust—only to be revived with
the realisation that their Master still lives as Lord and King.
All our sufferings can similarly be turned to joy when we
totally unite ourselves with Jesus our Lord and suffer with him and for him,
for his Kingdom and for the sake of all our brothers and sisters.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/e1065g/
Thursday,
May 29, 2025
(If Ascension of the Lord is celebrated on
Thursday, see Sunday, June 1)
Opening Prayer
Lord God, our Father,
you are not far away from any of us, for in
you we live and move and exist and you live in us through your Holy Spirit. Be
indeed with us, Lord, send us your Holy Spirit of truth
and through him deepen our understanding of
the life and message of your Son, that we may accept the full truth and live by
it consistently. We ask you this through Christ our Lord.
Gospel Reading - John 16: 16-20
Jesus told to his disciples: “In a short time
you will no longer see me, and then a short time later you will see me again.
Then some of his disciples said to one another, 'What does he mean, "In a
short time you will no longer see me, and then a short time later you will see
me again," and "I am going to the Father”?
What is this "short time"? Wedon't
know what he means.' Jesus knew that they wanted to question him, so he said,
'You are asking one another what I meant by saying, "In a short time you
will no longer see me, and then a short time later you will see me again."
'In all truth I tell you, you will be weeping and wailing while the world will
rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy.”
Reflection
•
John 16: 16: Absence and presence. Jesus says a
“little while” (un mikròn), that is to say, a very brief period of time,
perhaps one “instant.” Over and beyond the multiplicity of nuances what we want
to stress here is the exiguity of time. Just as the time that Jesus remained as
Incarnate Word, with his own, in the same way, the time between his departure
and his return, will also be brief. There will be no change in the interior
situation of his disciples because the relationship with Jesus does not change:
He is permanently close to them. Therefore, the vision of Jesus will not suffer
any interruption but will be characterized by the communion of life with Him
(Jn 14: 19).
•
The repeated use of the verb “to see” in v. 16:
is interesting: «In a short time you will no longer see me, and then a short
time later you will see me again.” The expression “a short time you will no
longer see me” recalls the way with which the disciples see in the historical
Jesus the Son of God; the other expression “a short time later you will see me
again” recalls the experience of the Risen Christ. Jesus seems to want to say
to the disciples that for a very short time the conditions to see him still
exist, to recognize him in his visible flesh, but later, they will see him in a
different vision in so far as he will show himself transformed, transfigured.
• John
16: 17-19: The lack of understanding of the disciples. In the meantime, some
disciples do not succeed to understand what this absence signifies, means, that
is to say, his going to the Father. They experience a certain disturbance
regarding the words of Jesus and they express this asking four questions,
joined together in one same expression: “What he is saying, what does it mean?”
Other times the reader has listened to the questions of Peter, of Philip, of
Thomas. And of Judah, not Iscariot, and now those disciples who ask for an
explanation. The disciples do not succeed to understand what he is speaking
about. The disciples have not understood how Jesus can be seen again by them if
he goes to the Father (vv.16-19). But the question seems to be concentrated on
the expression “a short time” that for the reader seems to be a very long time
that never ends, especially when one has anguish and sadness. In fact, the time
of sadness does not pass away. An answer of Jesus is expected, but the
Evangelist places a repetition of the same question as before: “You are asking
one another what I meant by saying: “In a short time you will no longer see me;
and then a short time later you will see me again?”
(v. 19).
•
John 16: 20: The response of Jesus. In fact,
Jesus does not respond to the question asked: “What does in a short time,
mean?”, but he invites them to trust. It is true that the disciples will be
tried, tested, they will suffer very much, they will be alone in a hostile
situation, abandoned in a world which rejoices because of the death of Jesus,
but he assures them that their sadness will be changed into joy. To the time of
sadness is opposed a time in which everything will be overturned. That opposing
clause “but your sadness will be transformed into joy,” underlines such a
change of perspective. For the reader it is evident that the expressions “a
short time,” “in a short time” correspond to that instant or moment in which
the situation is overturned, but up to that moment everything will be of
sadness and trial.
•
In last instance, the disciples receive from
Jesus a promise of happiness, of joy; in virtue of that instant in which the
difficult situation is overturned, to which “his own”, the ecclesial community
are subjected, they will enter into a reality of the world enlightened by the
resurrection.
Personal Questions
•
Am I convinced that the moment of trial, of
suffering will pass away and He will come back to be with me?”
•
«You will be weeping and wailing, but your
sorrow will turn into joy.” What effect do these words of Jesus have in your
human events? How do you live your moments of sadness and of anguish?
Concluding Prayer
The whole wide world has seen the saving power of our God.
Acclaim the Lord, all the earth, burst into shouts of joy! (Ps
98: 3-4)
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