Liturgical
Year
B-Cycle II 5th
Sunday of Easter by Fr. John Carney Topic: Staying United
to Christ + + +
Reading I Acts 19:1-8 While Apollos was
in Corinth, Paul traveled through the interior of the country and down
to Ephesus where he found some disciples. He said to them, “Did
you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They answered
him, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” He said,
“How were you baptized?” They replied, “With the baptism of John.” Paul
then said, “John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the
people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in
Jesus.” When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the
Lord Jesus. And when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came
upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. Altogether there
were about twelve men.
He entered the synagogue, and for
three months debated boldly with
persuasive arguments about the Kingdom of God.
Gospel Jn 16:29-33 The disciples said
to Jesus, “Now you are talking plainly, and not in any figure of
speech. Now we realize that you know everything and that you do not
need to have anyone question you. Because of this we believe that you
came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you believe now? Behold, the
hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to
his own home and you will leave me alone. But I am not alone, because
the Father is with me. I have told you this so that you might have
peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I
have conquered the world.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In
the first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles,
written
of course, by St. Luke, we hear about the beginning of the early church.
We feel Luke’s energy today in that
reading. He is pleased.
The church is being built up and it’s growing
in numbers and all is well. Of course,
he attributes that to the spirit of God.
Remember when Jesus descended into heaven, the followers
numbered
perhaps only a few hundred souls. Today
it is 1.2 billion, so it has grown.
I
was thinking that if we were given that task in the 21st
century, we would probably go about it in the American way. We’d
do a study and we would identify what
the customers or the clients would like before they would join us.
Actually, in seminary, we had one professor
who referred to you “parishioners” as customers or clients. I
went to seminary at the end of the insane
age. We’re getting better, believe me. I
said, “If they are clients, why do they call us Father?”
He had no answer for that. In any
case, we would probably use marketing
techniques like industry.
It
occurred to me that if we wanted to appeal to the people
that we were a modern church, that we were really “with it” in this day
and
age, we might use a logo from, Wal-mart,
Where America
Shops toJoin
the church, Where America Worships.
Or we might use the Pepsi logo, Join
the Pepsi generation, to Join
the Church generation. If we
wanted to appeal to the liberal
progressive people of our society, we would maybe borrow a marketing
edge from
Miller Lite, Tastes great, less
filling. Perhaps Burger
King, Have it your Way at the
Catholic Church. If we
wanted to appeal to the traditional
type of person among us, we’d probably borrow one from Wonder
Bread. Do they still make Wonder Bread? Of course Wonder
Bread Helps Build Strong Bodies 8 Way. We could say, The church,
with the true bread from heaven,
builds strong bodies and minds and souls and hearts in every way.
We might borrow Chevy, Like a
Rock. I like Coke, The
Real Thing.
We
don’t have to do any of that because we already have a
church. Or better, God has given the
church to us. Of course, the church is
His Body. The church is Christ and
Christ is the church. The church has
many themes or logos. Often we see a
fish; of course the great symbol of the church is the cross. I
remind people who perhaps aren’t real happy
that the church doesn’t change too quickly.
On top of the church is a cross, not a weather vane. We like that
old rugged cross.
One of the ancient symbols of the church,
even before Christ, from the Jewish and before them the Hebrew people,
was the
symbol that Jesus spoke about in John 15 today, the vine.
As a matter of fact, on ancient Jewish and Hebrew
coins, many of them had a vine. Around
the temple there was inscribed a vine around the entire temple.
Of course, the symbol of the vine is that God
is the vine and we, his people, are grafted on to that vine.
Jesus explains to us that we live in him and
with him. If we are cut off from him, if the branch is separated from
the vine,
then it dies. Jesus uses this analogy
today to tell us that we must stay united to him, and we want to do
that. How do we do that?
I propose there are 3 principal ways. In
these ways, we are always connected and we
are sure that we are united to Christ Jesus.
The
first way is that we gather in his name.
All the people who claim to be Christian but
they don’t belong to any church, that doesn’t make any sense. You
are baptized into Christ and into his
body the church. A lot of times, that’s
just the lazy man who wants to read the paper on Sunday mornings excuse
for not
being a member of the church. The Jewish
people, the Hebrew people, had no notion of belonging to God other than
in a
communal sense. That’s the way it always
has been and that’s the way God intended it to be.
There is a Psalm, a Jewish Psalm, “we will
praise you Lord in the assembly of your people.” Assembly.
In Greek, the word to assemble is ecclesia, and that’s the word
for
church. Unfortunately, our English word
for church comes from the German word karch,
which means this building, but in
the Latin languages, from Latin, Ecclesia, in Spanish, iglesia, in
French
eglise, means to assemble. That is God’s
plan for us, that we stay united to him and by being united to each
other in
the church, so we gather in His name.
Secondly,
we listen to his words, the Bible, his love letter
to the human person, and we do more than to listen to it, but we
interact with
it. We Catholics are often accused of
not knowing scripture, and I think that’s unfair unless you sleep on
Sunday
through the mass. You know we have a
3-year cycle, A, B, and C. We’re in B
now. A is Matthew, B is Mark, and C is
Luke and John is interspersed at key times throughout the year,
especially
during Easter. We heard from John today. Over a 3-year
period, we hear the most
important Scriptures from the Hebrew Scriptures from the Old Testament,
and
from the Christian Scriptures, the New Testament. Ideally,
when you come to mass you should
have already read the Scriptures. I know
you all have. Did you?
You
know, during RCIA, The Rite of Christian Initiation for
Adults, the RCIA Candidates sit over here.
You know what they do? They come
to mass and they’re ready. They’ve read
the readings and they’ve studied them and they are thinking, “What is
he going
to say?” I look over at them and they’re
all really attentive.
The rest of you…but they are really attentive.
Then you know we dismiss them before the
Creed. You know, I wish we’d keep them
until after the collection, but… Then
they go elsewhere and then they discuss the scriptures.
They have prepared before mass, they listen
to the Homilist, they critique him of course, and then they discuss
what the
Scriptures meant to them, because the Scriptures are so rich.
The
third part is that we must also eat His body and drink
His blood. If we do not do this, we will
not have life in you. There is a warning
in John 15. Jesus is saying, “If you are
to become the person that God intended you to become, you must remain
united to
me. If you do not remain united to me,
there
is no hope for you. Your life will end
in spiritual tragedy.” There is also a
promise. “If you live in me, and my
words stay part of you, you may ask what you will--it will be done for
you. My Father has been glorified in you
bearing
much fruit and becoming my disciples.”
We
must remember that separated from Jesus, we can do
nothing. With Jesus we will bear much
fruit. With Jesus we will have abundant
life. With Jesus we will know the joys
of eternal life.