Fifth Sunday of Easter
Memory of St. Athanasius (295-373), bishop of Alexandia in Egypt.
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Homily
After the resurrection, the apostles and disciples encounter Jesus again and again: first in the upper room, then on the road to Emmaus, and then on the Sea of Galilee. In some ways the same thing happens to us from Sunday to Sunday. We are gathered together in order to meet the Risen One, the same Jesus, who with incredible tenderness, told his friends: "Little children, I am with you only a little longer" (Jn 13:33). We encounter him at a time when many people think it is not very useful to go close to Jesus and listen to his voice. And yet there are tears in every man and woman’s heart; there is mourning, weeping, and especially the toil of living. When we forget to encounter the one who conquered death by rising to life we are left with our poor energies and our poor feelings, self-sufficient though we may be. We quickly discover the toil of living, while the best part of our humanity is obscured. It is enough to lift our eyes from our lives and look to other lands and we will understand how much death - how much mourning and weeping - there still is in the world. And we do nothing! Doubtlessly we could at least cry out a little louder against the scandal of so much injustice and abuse. How can we be so indifferent, how can we hurry through our lives, almost drunk with our own problems, whether personal or national? How can we live, talk, dialogue, and face public life without encountering pain and death, without being pushed to build a different world?
The believer goes to encounter the word of the Risen and calls for a new day: the day when there will be no more lamentation, because death and all of its dark power will be defeated. The old things are still too strong; we have to work and hope for new things, so that evil and its followers will no longer rule over the world. When brothers and sisters gather around the Risen One, it is not a routine appointment; it is a serious and rousing moment. On the evening of the Thursday of the last supper, after Judas had left, the mood became calmer and more intimate. It was then that Jesus gave the disciples "the new commandment." Every Sunday is like this. The command that Jesus gives us is "new:" "Just as I loved, you also should love one another" (v. 34). "New" also means "latest," "definitive," and, we could even say, "unique" and "fundamental." When we begin to listen to these words around the table of the Lord - the table that is set for us every Sunday, even if we sometimes abandon it - and we try to love each other, as he loved us, a greater, a wider love burns within us and transcends our usual boundaries. It gives birth to a desire for a new and better day - a desire for the end of every sadness, every pain, and every dark power. Christians are not asked to build a Christian city or a sacred city, but nonetheless, when we gather around the Lord, we hear a voice say: "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them, he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ And the one who was seated on the throne said, See, I am making all things new’" (Rev 21: 3-5).
Our closeness to the Risen One touches and transfigures us. The new heavens and the new earth begin when we start to love each other as the Lord loved us. And what we have then is more than the transfiguration of individual people; a whole group is transfigured, whether big or small. Jesus himself said, "For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them" (Mt 18:20). Wherever the Lord lives, the old things can live no more, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (Jn 13:35). Tertullian said that it was the practice of love, more than anything else, that branded Christians in the eyes of pagans, "See how they love each other’ they say, while pagans hate each other, and "see how they are ready to die for one another’ while they prefer to kill each other." The "new" commandment is not just the distinguishing characteristic of those who belong to Christ, it is the very face of the risen Lord who lives in the little group of poor disciples who are trying to put the commandment into practice.
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
