5th Sunday of Easter Cycle B

May 6, 2012

Click here to review the readings

 

So great is the Resurrection and what it promises each of us

that we continue liturgically to celebrated Easter

It would seem that a good place to start, as we look at this Sunday's readings, is with the Gospel  from John.  It is from the  discourse that Jesus gives to his Apostle at the Last Supper to give them strength and courage for what lies ahead in each of their lives.  He knows that they will face doubts, struggles, fears, and disbelief in seeing Him as the Messiah when His suffering and death happen.  Those words, we hear today, can also be strength for us where ever we are at this moment.

We hear the words,  

Remain in me!

In our moment of carrying the cross, our doubts, our fear, our struggles, can be so great that we turn to worldly things to take away the cross.  The Apostles, too, were tempted to flee from the struggles and in fact, they did do that especially during the Passion of Christ.

It is so easy to believe these above words from the Gospel when all is going well, but what about those times of struggle that come for each of us?

It is so tempting to not remain in Christ, but to turn to other worldly things that take our minds off of following the way of Christ.

Then we can also look at the events in Saul's life. He thinks, he is on his  life's course of which he is sure of.  He has studied the law of Moses and knows it in and out.  He has become a Rabbi and know that this Christian thing is opposed to all that he believes.  He is on his way to Damascus to capture Christians and take them back to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed, when the Lord calls him and changes his name to Saul.  We all know the story of his conversion, of how he was thrown from his horse and blinded.

After this conversion experience, Paul stays in Damascus for many days and goes into the synagogues and speaks of Jesus.  Imagine the fear people must have had of him who was this great rabbi, and now speaks about what he was so opposed to, Jesus as Messiah.  No wonder the Christians, converted Jews, did not trust him and were afraid of him.

Sometimes, God is working in our lives in the exact thing or things that we fear.

I will not say I'm sorry.

I will not go out of my way for that person.

Paul must have come to the conclusion that the only way is what we will hear in the second reading from the letter of John.

 

Paul knows that the love of Christ is the love that is willing to die for the other, is willing to face struggles and difficulties.

 

We know that we are to preach Christ's love, forgiveness, and mercy to others.  And for sure we are.  But how is the question. 

 We are given the answer in the second reading.

We pray for the grace to be able to love as He loved.  We pray for the grace to have mercy, compassion and forgiveness even to the enemy, to the one who bugs us the most, to the one who is so difficult and ungrateful.  

Or do we, in those difficult times of struggle, cut yourself off from the vine.  We all do so at moments in our lives.  The real gift is to be able to discover that, at times, we don't love as Christ.  We don't abide in Him.  That is the moment to pray for our own conversion, to like Saul, be knocked us our horse and then humbled so we can forgive, and love, even the ones who do not deserve it.

 

In today's liturgy, Christ comes once again to assure each us that we are called, and we are to make Christ present to other by our lives.  One of the options from the new English translation for dismissal at mass is, "Go, glorifying the Lord with your life".

 

 

 

 

 

Christ is Risen, Alleluia

Christ is truly Risen, Alleluia