Sixth Sunday of Easter
Today the Orthodox Churches celebrate Easter.
In Israel today is Yom Hashoàh, the Memorial of the Shoah, in which the extermination of the Jewish people in the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War is remembered.
Többet
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Today the Orthodox Churches celebrate Easter.
In Israel today is Yom Hashoàh, the Memorial of the Shoah, in which the extermination of the Jewish people in the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War is remembered.
First Reading
Acts 10,25-26.34-35.44-48
and as Peter reached the house Cornelius went out to meet him, fell at his feet and did him reverence. But Peter helped him up. 'Stand up,' he said, ' after all, I am only a man!' Then Peter addressed them, 'I now really understand', he said, 'that God has no favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. While Peter was still speaking the Holy Spirit came down on all the listeners. Jewish believers who had accompanied Peter were all astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit should be poured out on gentiles too, since they could hear them speaking strange languages and proclaiming the greatness of God. Peter himself then said, 'Could anyone refuse the water of baptism to these people, now they have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?' He then gave orders for them to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. Afterwards they begged him to stay on for some days.
Psalmody
Psalm 97
Antiphon
Shout and sing praises to the Lord.
Sing a new song to the Lord
for he has worked wonders.
His right hand and his holy arm
have brought salvation.
The lord has made known his salvation;
has shown his justice to the nations.
He has remembered his truth and love
for the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our god.
Shout to the Lord all the earth,
ring out your joy.
Sing Psalms to the Lord with the harp
with the sound of music.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
acclaim the Kind, the Lord.
Let the sea and all within it, thunder;
the world, and all its peoples.
Let the river clap their hands
and the hills ring out their joy
at the presence of the Lord : for he comes,
he comes to rule the earth.
He will rule with the world with justice
and the peoples with fairness.
Second Reading
1 John 4,7-10
My dear friends, let us love one another, since love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love. This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him. Love consists in this: it is not we who loved God, but God loved us and sent his Son to expiate our sins.
Reading of the Gospel
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
John 15,9-17
I have loved you just as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete. This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you. No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you. I shall no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know the master's business; I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father. You did not choose me, no, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last; so that the Father will give you anything you ask him in my name. My command to you is to love one another.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Yesterday I was buried with Christ,
today I rise with you who are risen.
With you I was crucified;
remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Homily
"No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." Perhaps Abraham who was called God's friend or even Moses whom God considered his friend came to mind to the disciples, or perhaps they did not understand these words of Jesus. But, beyond their understanding, Jesus showed what love he loved them with.
And it is the love with which the Lord continues to love us too. Like those disciples, we too can struggle to understand and live it. But the Lord repeats to us that he loves us first and that he loves everyone, even if we are undeserving. As John himself reminds us in his First Letter: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1Jn 4:10).
This is the love in which we are called to abide, to live.
God's love is not a closed love, cold and indifferent to the advance of evil. God's love prompted - compelled, one might say - the Father to send his own Son to save all from the slavery of sin and death. We are all his children; indeed, he wants us all to experience his friendship. And, since Jesus gave his life for all, it is evident that everyone for Jesus is his friend: "I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last." The mutual love that the Lord gives us to live in, is not to remain closed in the enclosure, but to bear fruit for all. And if in this passage mutual love is the only commandment the Lord gives to the disciples, it is because this love has in itself a universal destination. Already in mutual love there are all human beings. No one is a stranger or an enemy to the community of disciples. Mutual love, our communion in the Lord, is as universal as God's own love. Indeed, it is a small realisation of his dream about the world. That is why Jesus had said shortly before: 'By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (Jn 13:35). The communion of brothers and sisters - the fraternity that we are called to live and enjoy - is the real power that changes the world. It is our joy; it is the joy of the poor and the hope for those who wait for a light in the darkness of this world of ours.
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!
