6th Sunday of Easter, Year A

27th April, 2008 6th Sunday of Easter, Year A
(updated for Sunday Masses 27-4-08).
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‘The world cannot receive the “Spirit of Truth” because it neither knows or sees it!’ So goes the gospel this weekend. Jesus’ truth is a divine truth, and it is clear that it is very different from what the world sees as “TRUTH”.

I heard on the news the other day that a recent study showed a significant percentage of young people would prefer to be either hit by a bus….. or be blind or have three years taken off their lives, or have a limb missing than to be considered “fat”. How has our society gotten to this? What levels of distortion of truth can we be subjected?? Instead. Jesus’ Gospel calls us to see our true self as utterly loved by God….as we are, as well as we are called to be. One aspect of ourselves does not define the whole. If we look inside ourselves and see our faults and weaknesses… the Gospel calls us to gently trust in God’s love and grace, not for us to descend into self-loathing.

The gospel of Jesus is doing the opposite… fostering love of self and of others…… seeing ourselves as loved and worthy of respect and kindness and giving that out to everyone we meet too… but just what messages have we been bombarded with to have these other serious distortions become a notable mindset….

This weekend’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles shows us an early follower of Jesus helping others. But it uses images that seem foreign and confusing for us today…. the reading speaks of “casting out evil spirits.” ….. However, even in modern secular vocabulary we speak of a ‘spirit of negativity’ in a group, a ‘spirit of desctructiveness’. We can still attitudes and values in our lives that can corrode our sense of peace and worth…… What are the negative spirits of today?..... …….. The spirit of self-loathing….. the spirit negative self worth……. Anger, hatred and possessiveness in our own time! If only we can cast out these destructive and imprisoning conditions…… And we can if we believe and start with ourselves.

Jesus is offering us a very, very different definition of concepts such as “LOVE”, “POWER”, “SUCCESS” or “priorities of life.” He invites us to be utterly transformed by HIS TRUTH of these concepts; if we dare to allow Jesus to teach us.

The message of Jesus…. the Christian message… is the road less travelled…… it is a school of Love…. where we are all fellow students with Jesus as our teacher. In this church community we are constantly learning, a process that could well take a lifetime, how to LIVE Jesus’ understanding of LOVE and TRUTH. Jesus wants his followers to take on his worldview which is radically different….. and centred on being people of truth… and love…. as revealed by Jesus… who saw the truth of all those he met //…..and related to them with the most profound reverence and love….. because that was what he was seeing when he looked inside their hearts….. that is what he sees when he looks inside your heart! …

To be baptized, to be confirmed.. to share in Eucharistic communion with the Christian community…. that is saying a profound and absolute YES to being connected to Jesus who is LOVE and TRUTH… and allowing God’s Spirit to guide our minds, our hearts and our actions and choices by that truth and love…… May God who has begun this good work in us… bring it to perfection….

++++(thoughts from Saturday night’s homily) :

Love! So often when the word “love” is mentioned, it is often defined in terms of a “feeling” rather than a decision (an engagement of both head and heart) to make another person more important than we are in our daily lives. Love is when we decide that the good of another person is more important than our own good, or at least just as important as our own, no less important than our needs.. That is not always an easy decision to make. It seems that the basic instincts always tell us that our own good is more important than the good of anyone else.

Jesus gives us teachings like the beatitudes or like the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which someone goes out of his way to help another person who belongs to a group of people rejected by his own social group. Who is our neighbour: the one who has compassion on us. And the one on whom we have compassion.

The second reading, from the First Letter of Saint Peter, tells us that we should always speak to others about our faith (and in fact about everything) with gentleness and reverence. This is wonderful advice for anyone who wants to preach Jesus Christ! Jesus is telling us how to live out His commandment of love.



(source: Paul Kelly and also thoughts and words of the “Abbott, Monastery of Christ in the Desert, internet site”. )