May 10, 2026
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Lectionary: 55
Reading
1
Philip went down
to the city of Samaria
and proclaimed the Christ to them.
With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip
when they heard it and saw the signs he was doing.
For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice,
came out of many possessed people,
and many paralyzed or crippled people were cured.
There was great joy in that city.
Now when the
apostles in Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God,
they sent them Peter and John,
who went down and prayed for them,
that they might receive the Holy Spirit,
for it had not yet fallen upon any of them;
they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Then they laid hands on them
and they received the Holy Spirit.
Responsorial
Psalm
Psalm 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20
R. (1) Let
all the earth cry out to God with joy.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Shout joyfully to God, all the earth,
sing praise to the glory of his name;
proclaim his glorious praise.
Say to God, “How tremendous are your deeds!”
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
or:
R. Alleluia.
“Let all on earth worship and sing praise to you,
sing praise to your name!”
Come and see the works of God,
his tremendous deeds among the children of Adam.
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He has changed the sea into dry land;
through the river they passed on foot;
therefore let us rejoice in him.
He rules by his might forever.
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Hear now, all you who fear God, while I declare
what he has done for me.
Blessed be God who refused me not
my prayer or his kindness!
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Reading
2
Beloved:
Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.
Always be ready to give an explanation
to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,
but do it with gentleness and reverence,
keeping your conscience clear,
so that, when you are maligned,
those who defame your good conduct in Christ
may themselves be put to shame.
For it is better to suffer for doing good,
if that be the will of God, than for doing evil.
For Christ also
suffered for sins once,
the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous,
that he might lead you to God.
Put to death in the flesh,
he was brought to life in the Spirit.
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:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always,
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept,
because it neither sees nor knows him.
But you know him, because he remains with you,
and will be in you.
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me,
but you will see me, because I live and you will live.
On that day you will realize that I am in my Father
and you are in me and I in you.
Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051026.cfm
Commentary on Acts
8:5-8,14-17; 1 Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21
The common theme of John’s Gospel which we are reading these
weeks is the fact that Jesus, following his resurrection, has left us and
returned to his Father. At the same time, he is still with us, but in a
different way from before his death on the cross. And today’s readings tell us
that it is through the Spirit of the Father and the Son that that presence is
experienced by us.
We see this clearly expressed in today’s Gospel passage.
Jesus is telling his disciples at the Last Supper that, through the Spirit, he
will continue to be with them—and us—forever. He calls the Spirit an
‘Advocate’. In other biblical translations he is called a ‘Counsellor’ (NRSV,
NIV), ‘Comforter’ (King James), Counsellor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate,
Strengthener, Standby (Amplified Bible), Advocate (NAB, NRSV). The Greek word
is parakletos, from which comes the older word ‘Paraclete’.
Basically a ‘paraclete’ is someone like a defence lawyer, someone who stands by
you in court and gives you support, advice and comfort in difficult situations
where you need help. That is precisely the role of the Spirit in our Christian
life. The Spirit teaches, guides, supports, consoles and comforts as we try to
be faithful in our following of Christ’s Way.
Pointing the Way
He is the Spirit of Truth, the same Truth that Jesus himself represents.
Earlier Jesus said:
I am the way and the truth and the life. (John
13:6)
That Truth is not just a list of dogmas or doctrines. It
represents a deep understanding of what life is really about, of how it is to
be lived in partnership with one’s brothers and sisters in our common search to
make this world truly God’s Kingdom—to make this world the kind of place that
God wants it to be. It combines the ideas of wholeness and integrity, a total
harmony between the inner and outer self and between the self and God. All this
we find in the highest degree in Jesus.
Many in the world do not recognise the Spirit. The ‘world’
here represents all those who live only for themselves, who see everyone else
and everything else as stepping stones to their own advancement, pleasure and
enjoyment. Such people are totally deaf to the Spirit.
However, we who have accepted Christ and his gospel do know
the Spirit:
You know him because he abides with you, and he will be
in you. (John 14:17)
So, although Jesus tells his disciples that he is about to
leave them and they are clearly alarmed and despondent at the idea, he
reassures them that he will come back, that he will continue to be with them
though in a different way.
An end and a beginning
To the ‘world’, Jesus’ death on the Cross was the end of everything. He had
been a flash in the pan, a sensation of a kind in that corner of the
world—Jesus Christ the ‘Superstar’. But now, as Jesus speaks with his disciples
at the Last Supper, it was all about to end in total failure and degradation.
But to those who can see, those who can discern the truth in the cross, he is
not a dismal failure, but the reality of the triumph of love over hate. They
can see that the object of that love is themselves; they know that Jesus has
passed into life and that all those who identify themselves totally with him
and his vision of universal Love still enjoy his presence.
Jesus was lifted up in glory on the cross, and he tells us:
On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you
in me, and I in you.
And how is that to be brought about? He says:
They who have my commandments and keep them are those who
love me…
And what are those commandments? Quite simply, it is to put
Love at the heart of all living.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life
for one’s friends. (John 15:13)
This is what Jesus did for us and what we are called on to
do for others.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if
you have love for one another. (John 13:35)
And what is that Love? As we have mentioned before, this
‘love’ (Greek, agape) is an unconditional desire for the well-being
of every single person. Another word for ‘love’ in the Gospels is ‘service’.
Not the service of the slave for a master, not the service of the specialist—be
that person a doctor, lawyer or priest—for the lay person, but the service of
one brother or sister to another brother or sister without the distinction of
rank, race, nationality, religion or anything else.
The Way to loving God
It is all summed up in the Gospel’s final sentence:
They who have my commandments and keep them are those who
love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them
and reveal myself to them.
We love God not just by expressing our love directly for
him, but by the way in which we extend Love to all those around us without any
exceptions whatever. And all those who love Jesus will receive the love of the
Father. But how do we love Jesus? We love Jesus when we love him in our
brothers and sisters:
Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the
least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt
25:40)
When we live our lives in this way we will in turn
experience God’s love and grow in our familiarity with him.
Disciples and apostles
We see that love of God and Jesus coming to the people of Samaria in the First
Reading from the Acts of the Apostles. That love comes to them through the
deacon Philip and his companions as they proclaim the message of the gospel.
Great signs of healing follow. The examples of evil spirits being driven out
and the curing of individuals who were crippled and paralysed point to the much
deeper liberation that comes through our surrender to the gospel—a real healing
and being made whole, and a liberation from everything that inhibits our being
fully functioning people.
This experience leads to the Samaritans’ total acceptance of
the gospel and their being filled with the Spirit of the Father and of Jesus.
What they received from Philip, they in their turn will now communicate to
others who have yet to hear the message. The lesson for our own Christian lives
is so clear. To be a disciple of Christ is to be not only a disciple—a
follower—but also an apostle, sharing our experience of knowing Christ with
others.
A message to be made one’s own…
The way in which we are to do this is indicated by the Second Reading today:
…in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready
to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope
that is in you…
Given that we have an inner conviction of the truth of Christ
and his message, we must be always ready and able to give people an adequate
explanation of our faith. It is not just something we hold because we were told
to do so, or because we read about it in a book. It may have begun there, but
now it is something based on an inner conviction arising from personal
experience. As St Paul says,
…I know the one in whom I have put my trust… (2
Tim 1:12)
And that inner conviction must flow out into our
behaviour—our words, our actions, the way we relate with other people, whoever
they may be.
…but one not always welcomed
Peter tells us to share our faith:
…Maintain a good conscience so that, when you are
maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to
shame.
It is a paradox that, like Jesus himself, our very goodness
may be the reason we are attacked. But we need also to be sure that we have not
given genuine cause for criticism, that we do not proclaim one thing and do
something else. We know that happens too often with all of us.
And Peter adds,
For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering
should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.
Indeed the eighth Beatitude (Matt 5:10) describes as happy
and fortunate those who are privileged to be maligned and persecuted for their
faithfulness to truth and love and justice. And if we think that strange, let
us not forget that:
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the
righteous for the unrighteous [and that means all of us], in
order to bring you to God.
So in today’s Mass, we rejoice in the gift of the Spirit by
which the Father and Jesus his Word continue to be with us, and in us, and to
guide us in the Way in which he guarantees our true happiness and fulfilment.
How do we know that is true? We just have to follow his invitation:
Come and see. (John 1:39)
Many have done so and not been disappointed.
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Sunday,
May 10, 2026
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Opening Prayer
Father, Christ your Son is already pleading for us,
but through your Word, which is life for us, you also grant us the grace of
opening our hearts to you in deep, intense, true and enlightened prayer. Send
us the Consoler, the Spirit of truth, not only that he may dwell beside us, but
that he may always dwell within our hearts. He is the fire of love that unites
you with Jesus, the kiss that you exchange always. Grant that, through your
Word, we too may enter into this love and live by it. Touch our spirit, our
mind and all our being that we may welcome the commandments, hidden in these
few verses; that we may keep them, that is, live them fully and in truth in
your presence and that of our brothers and sisters. Amen.
Gospel Reading – John 14: 15-21
To Place the Passage in Its
Context:
These verses lead us to the holy
place where Jesus celebrates the last supper with his disciples: the place of
his revelation, of his glory, of his teaching and of his love. Here, we too are
invited to sit at table with Jesus, to lean on his chest, receive his
commandment and thus prepare ourselves to enter with Him into his Passion and
resurrection. After the passage of 13: 1-30, which tells us of the actions,
words and feelings of Jesus and of those with him during the paschal meal, in
13: 31 we hear the words of the great last discourse of Jesus, which ends with
the priestly prayer of chapter 17. Here, then, we are still at the beginning.
In 14: 1-14 Jesus presented and offered himself as the way to the Father,
whereas in these few verses he introduces the promise to send the Holy Spirit,
as Consoler, as sure presence, but also the promise of the coming of the Father
and of himself in the depths of the disciples who, through faith, will have believed
in him and kept his commandments.
To Help Us in the Reading of the
Passage:
• vv. 15-17:
First, Jesus clarifies to his disciples that for Him, love, if it is
to be true love, must absolutely mean also the observance of his commandments.
In brief, He wants to tell us that if we do not keep the commandments then
there is no love; this is an essential and indispensable consequence, which
reveals whether we really do love or only deceive ourselves that we love. Jesus
also says that the gift of the Holy Spirit from the Father is the fruit of this
love and observance that give rise to the prayer of Jesus, thanks to which we
can receive the Spirit. Jesus explains that the Spirit is the Consoler, the
Spirit of truth, the One whom the world does not see, does not know, but whom
the disciples will see and know, the One who dwells with them and in them.
• vv. 18-20:
Jesus promises his coming, his return, which is about to happen in
his resurrection. He says that he will no longer appear in his passion, death,
and burial, but that he will reappear to his disciples, who will see him,
because he is the resurrection and the life. He also reveals his relationship
with the Father and invites them and us into that relationship; in fact, he
says that we shall know, that is we shall experience this relationship in our
depths. Jesus and no one else could ever promise a greater consolation than
this.
• v. 21:
Here Jesus’ discourse includes everyone; he moves from the “you” of his disciples to the “anyone” who begins to love him, enter
into a relationship with him and follow him. That which took place for the
disciples, the first chosen ones, takes place for anyone who believes in him.
Here Jesus opens to us and to all his relationship of love with the Father,
because by remaining in Christ, we too are known and loved by the Father.
Finally, Jesus promises again his love for anyone who loves him and the
revelation of himself, that is, a permanent manifestation of his love for us. The Gospel Text:
15 If you love me you will
keep my commandments. 16 I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another
Paraclete to be with you for ever, 17 the Spirit of truth whom the world can
never accept since it neither sees nor knows him; but you know him, because he
is with you, he is in you. 18 I shall not leave you orphans; I shall come to
you. 19 In a short time the world will no longer see me; but you will see that
I live and you also will live. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my
Father and you in me and I in you. 21 Whoever holds to my commandments and
keeps them is the one who loves me; and whoever loves me will be loved by my
Father, and I shall love him and reveal myself to him.'
A Moment of Prayerful Silence
so that the Word of God may enter
into us and enlighten our life.
Some Questions
•
This passage begins and ends with the same
words: the proclamation and invitation to love the Lord. I know that, through
this lectio divina, he wants to prepare me for a powerful meeting with love;
perhaps I am frightened a little, I know that I am not used to this, perhaps I
am ashamed, perhaps I feel superior towards these sugary words. But he insists
and keeps on repeating only this, only Love. So what am I going to do? Am I
going to stay and enter into this relationship, so involved, so upsetting? Or
shall I go away, run away, because I am afraid, because I don’t feel like
committing myself? Shall I choose Love, that is, this relationship, this
confrontation, this exchange, this reciprocal giving, this giving of myself? Or
shall I choose to be closed, remain alone in an absurd isolation of one who
does not want to stay with his God and with his equals? Jesus says: “If you
want”; He does not force. However, I know that he is waiting for me and has
been so for a long time… why wait any longer?
•
I read and read again this passage, so that
these words, so full of meaning, may be better imprinted on my mind and descend
into my heart. I note that Jesus insistently says “you”, when referring to his
disciples, those then with him but also those of today, that is us, each one of
us seen and looked at by Him with a unique, personal, unrepeatable love that
cannot be given away or substituted. I know that I too am included in that
“you”, which seems generic but is not. I try to read again Jesus’ words and
allow myself to be involved more directly; I place myself face to face, eyes to
eyes with Jesus and let him tell me all, using that “you” full of love, using
my name that only he really knows…. If you love me, my Father will send you
another Consoler; you know him; he dwells near you and will be within you; I
shall not leave you an orphan, I shall come back to you; you will see me; you
will live; you will know that I am in the Father and you in me and I in you.
•
Now we meet an important expression of Jesus,
repeated twice: “keep my commandments”.
This is an important and fundamental fact, because the authenticity of my love
relationship with the Lord depends on it; if I do not keep his commandments,
then I do not love him. But I try to ask myself more carefully what does the
verb “keep” mean, which looks so cold, so distant. I find it for instance in Mt
27: 36, where we read that the soldiers kept
watch over the crucified Jesus; it is then a matter of close and scrupulous
watching, an untiring watchfulness. On the other hand, in Jn 2: 10, it appears
with the meaning of keeping in store,
reserving, as Jesus says of the good wine kept until last. 2 Timothy 4: 7
uses the verb in that wonderful verse on faith: “I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the course, I have kept the faith”. This emphazises the effort,
the great care used to safeguard and
watch over that precious thing, faith. In Jn 17: 15, Jesus prays the Father to
keep his own from the evil one, that is to
preserve, protect, so that nothing and no one would harm or disperse them.
This is not simply a cold and external keeping of the
commandments of God or of Jesus, but much more; this is a relationship of love,
a being careful, protecting, keeping in life. Fundamentally it is realizing that which I am told or asked,
in my day-to-day life, every moment and in every situation.
A Key to the Reading
The following are the people I meet
in the passage: the Father, Jesus, the Spirit, the disciples, the world.
•
The
Father. The presence of the Father immediately appears as the point of
reference of Jesus, the Son. It is to the Father that he addresses his prayer.
He says: “I will ask the Father.” It
is this very special and intimate contact that makes of Jesus the Son of his
Father, that confirms him all the time as such. The relationship of love with
the Father is nourished and maintained by prayer at night, at different times
during the day, in times of need, in requests for help, in suffering, in the
most distressing trials. If we scan the Gospels several times, we shall find
Jesus thus, deeply involved in a relationship with the Father through prayer.
Here are some relevant passages: Mt 6: 9; 11, 25; 14: 23; 26: 39; 27: 46; Lk
21: 21ff; 6:12; 10: 21; 22: 42; 23: 34. 46; Jn 11: 41ff; 17: 1. I feel that
this is also the way for me; Jesus followed this way in depth, leaving me his
enlightened and certain footsteps so that I may have no fear in following him
in a similar experience. I too am the child of the Father, I too can pray to
him.
Immediately after this, Jesus shows us the Father as the
One who gives. In fact, giving is the
main characteristic of God, who is uninterrupted, measureless and countless
gift to all and at all times. The Father is Love and Love gives itself, gives
everything. It is not enough that he gave us Jesus, his beloved Son, he still
wants to bless us with and offer us life by sending the Holy Spirit. Indeed it
is written: “He who has not spared even his own Son but has delivered him for
us all, how can he fail to grant us also all things with him?” (Rm 8: 32).
Still more: the Father loves us (Jn 14: 23; 16: 27)! And
this love of his allows us to pass from death to life, from the sadness of sin
to the joy of communion with Him, from the solitude of hatred to sharing,
because the love of God inevitably takes us to the love of our brothers and
sisters.
•
Jesus the
Son. In these few verses, the figure and presence of Jesus appear
forcefully and with enormous clarity. He is immediately seen as praying, the
one who prays to the Father for us;
he raises his hands in prayer for us, just as he raises them in oblation on the
cross.
Jesus is the one who does not go away for ever, who does
not leave us orphans, but who will come
back: “I shall come back”. If it seems as though he is absent, I must not
despair, but go on believing in him because he will really come back. “It is
true, I come quickly!” (Ap 22: 20). He will come back and, as he said, he will
take us with him so that we may be where he is (Jn 14: 3).
Jesus is the living
one forever, the conqueror of death. He is in the Father and in us,
with an all-powerful force that nothing can ever destroy. He is in the Father,
but also in us, he dwells in us, he stays with us; there is no possibility of
true and full life for us other than that con-penetration of being which Jesus
offers us. He says yes, always, and is never sorry for, nor does he ever
withdraw from his commitment of love.
On the contrary! He loves
us, as the Father loves us and reveals
himself to us. He gives himself, offers himself, allowing us to know him,
to experience him, to touch and taste him. But this is a revelation that is
accompanied by love, as Paul says (2 Tim 4: 8).
•
The Holy
Spirit. In this passage the Spirit of the Lord seems to be an emerging
figure that embraces everything. He unites the Father to the Son, he brings the
Father and the Son into the hearts of the disciples; he creates an indissoluble
union of love, of being. He is called the Paraclete, that is the Consoler, the one who stays with us always, who will not leave
us alone, abandoned, forgotten; he comes and gathers us from the four winds,
from the dispersion and blows within us the strength for our return to the
Father, to Love. Only he can work all this within us; he is the finger of God’s
hand who, to this day, writes on the sand of our hearts the words of a new
covenant, which can never again be forgotten.
He is the Spirit of truth,
that is, of Jesus; in him there is no deceit, no falsehood, only the certain
light of the Word of the Lord. He has built his dwelling place within us; he has been invited and goes
from being close to us to being within us. He has become one with us, accepting
this nuptial union, this fusion; he is all good, the friend of men and women,
he is Love itself. That is why he gives himself thus, filling us with joy. Let
us beware of making him sad, of sending him away, of substituting his presence
with other presences, other covenants of love; we then would be the ones who
would die, because no one could ever console us in his place.
•
The
Disciples. The words Jesus addresses to his disciples are words that
challenge me more directly, more forcefully; they are addressed to me, they
impinge on my day-to-day life, they touch my heart, my thoughts, my most
intimate desires. They challenge me to a true love that I must transform into
concrete actions, keeping in mind the Word and the wish of the one I claim to
love, the Lord. A love that can be verified by my observance of the commandments. The disciple, then, here appears as
one who knows how to wait for his Lord on his return; at midnight, at cockcrow,
or early in the morning? It does not matter; He will come back and so I must
wait and be ready. What kind of love is it that will not wait, that will not
watch, not protect? The disciple is also one who knows; this is a knowledge given from above and which takes place
in the heart, that is in one’s most intimate being and personality, where we
make decisions to act, where we comprehend reality, formulate our thoughts, see
and love. This is knowledge in the biblical sense, born of a strong, long and
intimate experience, from a deep union and from reciprocal giving. This happens
between the Spirit and the true disciple of Jesus. An unstoppable ever-expanding
knowledge that leads us to Christ, to the Father, and places us within their
eternal and infinite communion of love: “You will know that I am in the Father
and you in me and I in you”. The disciple is also someone who lives, who is in, that is within, in an unbreakable
union with his Lord; it is not a superficial, distant, spasmodic union, but is
always within the relationship of love. The disciple goes willingly, goes and
comes back, allows him/herself to be held, entertained. And so realises the
word of the Gospel: “Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father.”
The disciple of Jesus, in fact, is one who is loved, one
chosen, from the beginning and forever.
•
The
World. The passage says little about the world, which we know to be very
important in the writings of John: the world cannot receive the Spirit, because it cannot see or know him. The world is immersed in darkness and
error; it does not see or know and cannot experience the love of God. The world
stays at a distance, turns its back, closes itself and goes away. The world
repays with hatred the love that the Lord has for it: the Father has so loved
the world that he gave his only Son. Perhaps we too must also love the world,
created by God; love it by uniting ourselves to the offering, the sacrifice of
Jesus for it.
Could it not be precisely thus, in Christ’s offering, that
we come to our full and brilliant truth as children of the Father, as
disciples, as lovers? Is not this the end of this lectio divina, of this meeting with Christ, with the Father and the
Spirit? Maybe it is really thus; we must come to the fullness of love, which is
the keeping of the commandments and especially the one commandment of Jesus:
love as I have loved you.
A Moment of Prayer: Psalm 22
Ref. You are with me, Lord, there is nothing
I want!
Yahweh is my shepherd, I lack nothing. In grassy meadows he
lets me lie.
By tranquil streams he leads me to restore my spirit.
He guides me in paths of saving justice as befits his name.
Even were I to walk in a ravine
as dark as death I should fear no danger, for you are at my side.
Your staff and your crook are there to soothe me.
You prepare a table for me under the
eyes of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup brims over.
Kindness and faithful love pursue me every day of my life.
I make my home in the house of Yahweh for all time to come.
Closing Prayer
Lord, you fill me with your love; I
abound with joy and deep peace. Through your Word, You have loved me much
during this meeting. You have given yourself to me fully; you have neglected
nothing in me, my person, my whole life history. Lord, I am because you are;
you are with me, within me. Today you have given me a new birth from above, you
have renewed me; I know, I see, I feel your own life in me. This is a real
Pasch, a true passing from death to life. Thank you, Lord, for your
inexpressible love, which covers me, overpowers me and yet relieves and uplifts
me!
Lord, I leave behind here my empty,
useless, incapable jar and run into the city to call my friends, those whom you
love, to tell them: Come you too that you may know Love!
Lord, one final thing: let
me never betray you. If Love is not freely given, shared, then it fades into
the distance, disappears, becomes sick and lonely. Please help me that I may be
love.
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