Becoming Icons of Christ and the Father, Fourth Saturday of Easter, May 9, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter
May 9, 2020
Acts 13:44-52, Ps 98, Jn 14:1-14

To listen to an audio version of today’s homily, said with a Covid-19 mask over my face — so please forgive what sounds like a lisp! — please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel, Jesus continues to speak about his relationship with the Father. On Thursday, he said that whoever accepts us, accepts the one who sent us (Christ) and the one who sent him (God the Father) and similarly the one who rejects us, implicitly rejects Christ and rejects the Father. This is because we’re in communion with Christ and Christ is in communion with the Father. Yesterday Jesus continued speaking about the reality, telling us that the only way to the Father’s house, to heaven, to being united with the Father forever is through him. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” he declared. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” To accept Jesus as the Way means that we will follow him. To accept him as the Truth means that we will believe Him and allow that truth to set us free from the lies on which we often comfortably base our existence. To accept him as the Life means that we will live off of him, deriving our very life from him not just theoretically but practically every day. The Christian life is a communion with God, a relationship, an intimate covenantal bond with Jesus through the Holy Spirit and in him with the Father. Jesus’ words, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” would have startled Jews, who always prayed in the Psalms for God to show them his paths so that they might know and walk in his truth, who begged him to show them the path of life. Jesus was saying, “I am that Path, I am that Truth, I am that Life.” Jesus was identifying himself to that degree with the Father.
• Today, when St. Philip asks Jesus to them them the Father, Jesus reveals that anyone who has seen him — the perfect image of the invisible God — has seen the Father because he abides in the Father and the Father in him, because the Father speaks through him and the Father dwells in him doing his works. This was a startling admission. Moses was not permitted to see God’s face when God passed by on Mt. Sinai. The Psalms were constantly focused on seeking the face of Jesus — “Your face, O Lord, I seek” (Ps 27) St. John Paul II used in Vita Consecrata as the essence of religious life — but this was for the most part a longing for heaven. Jesus was essentially saying here, “I am that face,” “I am the Father’s face incarnate,” was an amazing statement. But then went on to elaborate about our connection with him, saying that if we keep our communion with him, we will remind people of him and of the Father through our “words” and the “works we do in the Father’s name.” Jesus says he will work in us and those works will be even greater than the works Jesus himself has done in life: “Amen, amen, I say to you,” he swore, “whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” It was one thing for the eternal Son of God to do the works of the Father in Palestine. It will be something even greater for us and the members of his Mystical Body to do works throughout the world. Jesus himself raised the dead, cured lepers, made the blind see, exorcised demons, fed multitudes with paltry starting material and rose from the dead. What we will be able to do in his name is bring him from heaven to earth under the appearance of bread and wine, forgive sins in God’s name, and love others far more quantitatively extensively than he has loved us. And in so doing, bring many others to the the life, the truth and the path who is Jesus and to which he calls us all. Jesus reminds us through Philip that to accept him means to see the Father in Him, to hear the Father speaking through Him, to observe the Father doing his works through Him. Accepting Jesus also means that others will be able to see the Father and the Son in us, to hear his words through us, to see his deeds of love done with our own hands and hearts. That’s why Jesus was able to say to us on Thursday that the one who receives us receives him and in receiving him-and-us, receives the Father. Because of this Communion we’re supposed to have with Jesus, our Way, Truth and Life, Jesus tells us not only that we will go “greater” works than he has done but wants us to do those greater works, so that God will be glorified when others see ultimately God working through us.
• We see throughout the Acts of the Apostles miracles done in Christ’s name. But there are so many other works of Christ we’re called to recapitulate: works of charity, of evangelization, of forgiveness. Over the course of the last two days, we’ve heard St. Paul’s homily in the Synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia in which he covered four points: the Jews’ longing for salvation; Jesus’ coming as Savior; their leaders’ rejection of that salvation through conspiring to have him crucified and God’s response in raising him from the dead; God’s desire to bring that salvation to all if only we choose to accept and embrace it.  Today we see the response to that homily. Just as in Jesus’ earthly life, some joyfully accepted the salvation Jesus was offering through Saints Paul and Barnabas and others jealously rejected it. Through them, Jesus was coming to his own and his own was rejecting him, but to those who accepted him, he was giving power to become children of God. The setting is the same Synagogue on the following Sabbath. Since their initial “word of exhortation,” the buzz had spread. Now, a week later, “almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord,” a propitious occurrence at first sight. Jews and Gentiles had all come. The Jews had come because of what they had heard Paul and Barnabas say last week. They wanted to hear more. The Gentiles had come almost certainly because the “God-fearers,” the technical term for non-Jews who used to come to the Synagogue each Sabbath to hear the Word of God but who didn’t want to submit to circumcision or other aspects of the Jewish law, had doubtless spread word of the two men who had talked about salvation through the forgiveness of their sins being extended even to them. The Jews, however, were upset that so many Gentiles were there, hearing the Word of God as if it were meant for them. They could tolerate a few “God fearers,” attesting to the worth of what happens in their Synagogue. But to have the whole city there — in which there were far more Gentiles than Jews — risked watering everything down. And so, rather than continuing to listen to Paul as they did the previous week, they turned on him. St. Luke tells us, “When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and with violent abuse contradicted what Paul said.” A short time later they “incited the women of prominence who were worshipers and the leading men of the city [and] stirred up a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their territory.” Even though the prophets Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had all prophesied that salvation would be extended to all the nations, even though in today’s Psalm we prayed as the Jews did at the time, that all the ends of the earth see God’s salvation, the Jews in the Pisidian synagogue that Saturday wanted to maintain their privilege, and for that reason they, like many of the scribes, Pharisees, and chief priests in Jerusalem, refused to allow the fulfillment of those words. When Paul and Barnabas said, “The Lord has commanded us, ‘I have made you a light to the Gentiles, that you may be an instrument of salvation to the ends of the earth,’” many of the Jews in Antioch of Pisidia tried to extinguish that light. But the Gentiles there rejoiced in that light. Paul and Barnabas said to the Jews, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, but since you reject it and condemn yourselves as unworthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.” Acts tell us that the Gentiles “delighted when they hear this and glorified the word of the Lord.” They “came to believe” and to help spread the word of the Lord to the whole region. Even after Paul and Barnabas were expelled, “the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit,” because they had received the Lord and were now walking in his light. In such a short period of time — one week! — they had become disciples, identifying with Jesus the Master and learning to follow him through learning to follow Paul and Barnabas. What an extraordinary work of God carried out through Jesus’ prayer before the Father!
• Tomorrow we celebrate Mother’s Day in the United States and it’s an opportunity or us to focus a little on this sacramental dimension of human life. The Sisters of Life, and indeed the whole Church and culture, is involved in a battle between acceptance and rejection. Some mothers (and fathers and their families) accept life and others reject it through abortion or through practices like contraception that are built upon a fear of receiving life in the very act made by God for it to be received. Within the culture of life, especially within Christian hearts and homes, we have to help people to see that a baby growing within the womb is a sacramental image of Christ and therefore of God the Father. Jesus said, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.” None of us, even in the womb, is a mere mortal, as CS Lewis used to say, because we bear the image and likeness of God himself. We thank God for all of our moms who have received us from God as a gift. We pray for all of those moms who have made the wrong choice, that they might receive divine mercy. And we pray for all new moms expecting to give birth, that they may receive with love the blessed fruit of their womb.
• As we prepare to receive Jesus today, we ask him for the grace to pray this Mass in Jesus’ name and to be so united with him as a result that we will give him true witness, accept him to so great a degree that we will unite ourselves wholeheartedly to his saving will and go out to announce him to those here in New York with the same boldness with which Paul and Barnabas did in Galatia and beyond. As we behold his face and in him the Father’s, he seeks to make us his face in the middle of the world, even if temporarily partially covered by Coronavirus masks! This is the means by which we may recapitulate in our own time what happened in ancient Antioch in Pisidia: the “disciples” — us and others — “will be “filled with joy and the Holy Spirit!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
JN 14:7-14

Jesus said to his disciples:
“If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said to Jesus,
“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time
and you still do not know me, Philip?
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own.
The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me,
or else, believe because of the works themselves.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes in me will do the works that I do,
and will do greater ones than these,
because I am going to the Father.
And whatever you ask in my name, I will do,
so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”