Homily:
6th Sunday in Easter – Cycle A
Friends, at the beginning of
today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me, you will
keep my commandments.” If we look back
to earlier in this discourse (which, we recall is happening at the end of the
Last Supper), we remember that Jesus said to them, “I give you a new
commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one
another.” Putting the two together, we
can perhaps, then, hear Jesus say to his disciples “If you love me, you will
love one another as I have loved you.” And
how did Jesus love his disciples (all mankind, really)? He sacrificed his own life so that others may
live. Thus, the instruction, right at
the beginning of this Gospel passage, is full of weight: “If you love me, you
will make a sacrifice of your own life so that others may live.”
Now, in communities throughout
our country, have we not seen this commandment lived out over these weeks of
lockdown? Of course we have! From those charging in on the front lines to
confront this virus directly, to those working extra hours to make sure there’s
milk on the shelves of the grocery; from those who have shifted classrooms to
living rooms, to those who keep the bus running on time; from those who have
become the sole companions and protectors of the most vulnerable among us, to
those manning cameras to keep us connected to our faith... In big and small
ways, we have all been called to make sacrifices in our own lives so that
others may live. Assuredly, we’ve not
been perfect in making these sacrifices, and not all of our sacrifices have
been of equal weight, but we have all been called to make a sacrifice of our
lives so that others may live and we have decided to try to do so.
What also has come into sharp
relief from this “forced” living of Jesus’ command is a clearer sense of what
is “essential”, right? The lockdown left
only those public services and businesses open that were deemed
“essential”. In the first weeks of the
lockdown, perhaps we were clamoring that hair salons and barber shops were
“essential”. Even though our opinion of
that may not have changed, my guess is that now we’re more inclined to clamor
about how things like relationships, communion with other persons, physical
presence, and the sense that you can become greater than you are today are
actually the true essentials. The loss
of much of the activities of our normal lives has led to a loss of these
“experiences” that we value on a deeper level and we have come to realize that
while the activities may be deemed “non-essential", the human experiences
that they provide certainly aren’t.
That said, our readings today
take us even a step deeper into this understanding of what is “essential”. As I’ve already described from our Gospel
reading today, we heard Jesus’ words to his disciples at the Last Supper: “If
you love me, you will keep my commandments...”
He goes on to say that, when they keep his commandments, he will send
them an Advocate “to be with them always … the Spirit of truth...” We remember that, last week, we read Jesus’
words: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
If Jesus is the truth, and if he has promised to send the Spirit of
truth to be with them always, then that Spirit is his Spirit; and since he is
in the Father and the Father is in him (as he has said multiple times in this
discourse), then this Spirit must also be the Spirit of the Father. Not only is this a slightly veiled revelation
of the Trinity, but it is also a promise: that the world will no longer see him
(because it only sees fleshy things), but they will see him because his Spirit
will be in them, helping them to recognize him in all things.
What, therefore, is
“essential” in this? The indwelling of
the Spirit in us. How can we continue to
live in a world with so much suffering, when life, once predictable, no longer
seems predictable, but rather out to get us?
By maintaining contact with the Spirit dwelling within us. And why?
So that we can see Jesus in all things.
And when we see Jesus in all things, we see hope: just like when we look
at the crucifix we see the absolute darkest part of humanity, but we see Jesus
there—he who died on the cross but now lives—and so we see the hope that good
can come from that suffering—that good can conquer evil—and thus that we, if we
stay faithful to him, can enjoy life without suffering one day.
Let’s look also to the second
reading and the words of Saint Peter in his first letter. The first line of that reading says:
“Beloved: Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” “Sanctify Christ...” Peter is instructing us that Christ must be
“set apart” in our hearts. This is the
meaning of “to sanctify”: that is, “to make holy”, or, in other words, “to set
apart as consecrated to a sacred purpose”.
If we are “setting Christ apart for a sacred purpose” in our hearts,
what, then, is that purpose? Peter tells
us. “Sanctify Christ as Lord in
your hearts.” Ohhhhh. Well that sounds all pious and lovely,
doesn’t it? It is. But it is also a weighty statement. What we translate as “Lord” in English is the
Greek Kyrios or the Latin Dominus. From the Latin translation, we also get the
verb “to dominate”, meaning that to be Dominus means to be the one who
has authority over a thing. Thus, we see
now that when Peter instructs us to “set Christ apart for a sacred purpose in
our hearts”, that purpose is to be Dominus, that is, the one with
ultimate authority over our hearts.
But wait, our hearts are what
tell us what we really want and what will make us happy. If I let Christ be Lord over that, I’ll be
sad at least some of the time, won’t I?
Before I answer, let me ask you this: when lockdown was first
implemented, what were you sad about? A lot
of people that I talked to were sad that they couldn’t go to their favorite
restaurant or bar or take their spring break vacation like they had planned. After about a month, most of those same
people had started to say, “I don’t miss the restaurant or bar as much as I
miss being with other people.” If our
hearts could be wrong about what we really want when it comes to things like
this, couldn’t they also be wrong about the weightier things of life? Certainly, they could (and they often are).
Just before lockdown sent our
school children home for the year, I had started to spend my sessions with them
going through an old booklet titled “A Little Catechism in the Language of a
Child”. It was a question-answer format
book and the kids loved it because a) they always want to show what they know
and b) it spurred a lot of great questions.
One of the questions was “Why must we believe everything God reveals to
us?” And the answer is beautifully
simple: First, God knows everything, therefore he cannot be wrong; and second,
God is good—perfectly good—and therefore he will never lie. And wasn’t this the very first
temptation? The serpent tempted Eve by saying,
“Look, God is wrong; surely you won’t die! And so, he is lying to you, because
he doesn’t want you to be like him.” And
she fell for it. But God knows
everything so he cannot be wrong. And he
is goodness itself, which means that he will never lie.
Does it make sense now why it
is essential that Christ is sanctified as Dominus in our hearts? If our hearts can be fickle with what is
truly good for us, and, therefore, sometimes wrong about what is good for us,
and if we have a resource to which we can turn who cannot be wrong and who will
never lie to us, then why would we be afraid to allow him to have authority
over our hearts? Well, the reasons are
many—as much psychological as they are spiritual—and so, the important thing is
that we recognize that this task—sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts—is essential
for us and thus that we give ourselves to it constantly.
Friends, after all of that, I
think that we can pull something together to walk away with today on this 6th
Sunday in Easter. In a way, Jesus has
said to us today: “If you love me, you will sanctify me as Lord in your hearts
and, thus, you will keep my commandments.”
This, without doubt, is essential. If you have not included this in your
“essential activities” during this time of lockdown, I urge you to pray
intensely and intentionally to allow Jesus (through his teachings and example,
and the Spirit that he has given to us) to be “sanctified as Lord” in your
hearts.
In this time in which we have
been separated from him sacramentally, I know that we all deeply feel the truth
that these sacramental encounters with his grace are truly essential. But if we do the hard, but good work of
sanctifying Christ as Lord in our hearts during this time, well then the
sacramental grace that we receive in the coming weeks will be like rocket fuel
in our hearts and make us ready “to give an explanation to anyone who asks us a
reason for our hope”, to suffer for doing good, in solidarity with Christ, and
to acknowledge his good works among us and, thus, to cry out to God with joy. May the Spirit of truth, who remains with
each of us in this time of separation, help us to persevere in this good work
and, thus, to usher in a new springtime of life in the Church, our community,
and our world.
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 17th,
2020
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