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.