John Paul II’s Joint Testimony with the Holy Spirit, Sixth Monday of Easter, May 18, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Centenary of the Birth of St. John Paul II
May 18, 2020
Acts 16:11-15, Ps 149, Jn 15:26-16:4

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel Jesus describes how as Christians we are called to give joint witness together with the Holy Spirit. “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father,” Jesus tells us in this discourse taken from the Last Supper, “he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.” In the first reading, we see that witness taking place for the first time in Europe, as Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke went to Philippi to proclaim where the Jews would assemble on the Sabbath when there was no Synagogue, down by the river. Even though obviously none of those evangelists had been with Jesus physically from the beginning of his public ministry, they had been with him in a far more meaningful way, with him, the Word, from before the foundation of the world. He had them in mind from before the foundation of the world to receive Him within and to bring Him to the ends of the earth. And he likewise has had each of us in mind from that same beginning.
• There’s a beautiful and theologically very rich expression that St. Luke uses to describe Lydia who had come to the river that day from Thyatira. St. Luke tells us that she was a dealer in purple cloth, which meant she was very wealthy, because purple was pretty much restricted to the imperial family since purple dye was so costly to obtain, needing to be harvested one drop at a time from an Aegean shellfish. Therefore, in Christianity, she would have had a lot to “lose” insofar as Christians were so generous in sacrificing what they had for the needs of the brothers and sisters. St. Luke tells us that “the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying.” Notice he didn’t say, “the Lord opened her ears to pay attention,” but her heart. It means she was interiorizing into the center of her personality what Paul was saying, that she was loving, willing and embracing what she was coming to know. The same Holy Spirit who was testifying with and through Paul and his companions was opening up her heart at the same time so that she would be able to receive the seed of the word on good soil and bear much fruit. We pray often in Psalm 95, “If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts.” That’s the great danger, that we may just listen with our ears, but not open ourselves up for the Word to change who we are and all our aspirations. Lydia heard with great attentiveness of heart, literally her heart was “leaning” toward the word ready to move. That’s the way we should be listening to this morning’s readings as well. That’s the way we should be listening to the Lord in prayer. That’s the way we should be listening to Pope Francis and our Bishops exercising the Magisterium, following in the footsteps of St. Paul (and St. Peter).
• There’s a beautiful way this scene ends that shows the greatness of her attentiveness. She who was so hospitable to the Word of God immediately grasped the way Christians are always supposed to be hospitable to those who announce the Word, and how those who announce the Word also must have attentive hearts. So after she and her whole household were baptized — immediately, we presume, there at the river, much like the faith of the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip the Deacon had baptized earlier in the Acts of the Apostles — she said to St. Paul and his companions, “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my home.” Lydia’s home became the first Church in Europe, where she welcomed not only Paul, Timothy, Barnabas and Luke, but Christ who sent them, and the Father who had sent Christ. And St. Paul received this invitation as readily as Lydia had received the Word. The Word wasn’t just something that Lydia had listened to and accepted as an intellectual truth claim; it was something who changed her life, changed her home, changed everything. And she began to give witness to Christian hospitality together with the Holy Spirit immediately.
• I want to focus on one other aspect of this tandem proclamation of the Gospel together with and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus reiterates today that not everyone is going to receive it the way Lydia did in Philippi. There will be suffering on account of it, but this suffering likewise will be a far more powerful pulpit to show the way the Gospel changes lives, because it will give us an opportunity to show that it is a truth that we’re willing to suffer and die for, just like Christ suffered and died in sharing it with us. Jesus says, “I have told you this,” and here we can understand everything he had been telling us in Chapter 15 of St. John’s Gospel — about the Vine and the Branches, about his loving us and commanding us to love each other by laying down our lives for each other through union with Christ and his love, about being hated by all on account of his name, “so that you may not fall away. They will expel you from the synagogues; in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God. They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me.” Then he tells us, “I have told you this so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you.” I’ve always loved that last line. He told us these words not to frighten us but so that when we begin to suffer for the Gospel, we will remember that he had promised us that this would happen, and therefore, we should not be afraid. It would be an occasion for the Holy Spirit to give witness through and with us. It would be an occasion for us to grow in our communion with Jesus the Vine. It would be an occasion for us to experience even more profoundly his love and an opportunity for us to imitate and share in his love, even to the point of laying down our lives for him and with him for the salvation of others. Jesus would tell us in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Mt 10:19-20). Martyrdom, taken from the Greek word for witness, is indeed the supreme witness. And so we should welcome that word with attentive hearts just like Lydia had welcomed the Word proclaimed by St. Paul, and then we should invite the Crucified Christ, and the spiritually to-be-crucified and eventually physically beheaded Paul (Gal 2), and his to-be-martyred companions, into our home, into our families, into our lives, not hardening our hearts but responding to God’s grace to open them fully to the realities that will help us to experience the full truth of our baptism and its calling.
• Today, the Church celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of St. John Paul II and I would like to focus on four ways his life and teaching illustrate the lessons of today’s Gospel.
  • First, he was someone who lived by the Holy Spirit and sought to help the Church do so. His third encyclical was dedicated to the Holy Spirit, Dominum et Vivificantem. He gave an extended Catechesis on the Creed, in which he spent three years, and 80 Wednesday General Audiences, from April 26, 1989 until July 3, 1991 on the paragraphs in the Creed dedicated to the Holy Spirit. And then in 1998, he spent eight months of Catecheses — 28 different General Audiences — again on the Holy Spirit, as he and the Church sought the Holy Spirit’s help in preparing for the Great Jubilee. He was someone who prayed by the Holy Spirit. When Vittorio Messori asked him for the book length interview Crossing the Threshold of Hope how he prayed, he replied, “You would have to ask the Holy Spirit,” because he sought to pray as the Holy Spirit inspired. He lived by the Holy Spirit and made that Christian life the “synthesis and program” of his theology of the body. He preached by the Holy Spirit, giving joint witness as Jesus says in the Gospel, to Christ the Redeemer of Man. And he challenged the whole Church to recognize and respond to the “manifestation of the Spirit” given to each one for the common good.
  • Second, he was someone who always promoted the good of women, recognizing women’s special gifts, just like the Church today marks the spiritual maternity of Lydia in the Acts of the Apostles. His exhortation Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity of Women), his Letter to Women and his exhortation on the greatest woman who ever lived, Redemptoris Mater (Mother of the Redeemer) all spoke about woman’s special gift of receptivity, love and nurturing, what he termed the “feminine genius.” He promoted an authentic theology of woman in the Church, in marriage and in society as man’s equal in dignity. He focused in a particular way on woman’s role in the passing on of the faith, in cooperating with the Holy Spirit to get testimony in tandem.
  • Third, he, like Paul, Silas, Luke and Timothy, was an itinerant preacher. He called himself, a “pilgrim pope of evangelization,” and he made 104 foreign trips, logging 700,000 miles, the equivalent of three round trips to the moon, doing, what he dubbed a “traveling catechesis,” engaging multitudes and individuals, seeking to bring them to the faith. Many called him for this reason a modern St. Paul as St. Peter’s successor.
  • Finally, he focused a great deal of his energy trying to help Europe retain with gratitude it’s Christian roots. Europe as geography of course antedated Christianity, but as a cultural unity, that was brought about by the unifying force of Christian faith. When the European Union was founded, it was inspired by devout Christians who recognized what they had in common far beyond their nationalisms, and the Christian inspiration for this type of union was so strong it was almost taken for granted. But in the radical secularization that happened a few decades later, there was not just an historical amnesia but a rejection of the Christian roots of Europe as debate was happening for the EU Constitution. John Paul II constantly sought to help Europe remember. Pope Benedict and Pope Francis afterward have sought to do the same. He did not want Paul and his companions’ work to go in vain and centuries of fruit.
• Today at Mass, as we prepare to enter into the Paschal Mystery in Mass, we recall that Jesus said all of the words in today’s Gospel to us during the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed. Little did the apostles know that within hours these words would be getting fulfilled. At that moment, they didn’t really remember what he had told them because they had not been listening with adequately open and receptive hearts. But they’re all interceding for us — together with Saint St. John Paul II — so that we will learn from their mistakes and fully embrace what Jesus is saying. As he gives us his body and blood, the full manifestation of his love, the sign of his triumph even over the crucifixion and death, he summons us boldly to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to give the same witness. God so loved the world, St. John tells us, that he gave his only Son. And Jesus so loves the world that he gives us the Holy Spirit so that we might be able to go out into the world, in communion with him and his sacrificial love, and give our bodies, our souls, our homes, our lives to the work of salvation. If today you hear the Lord’s voice harden not your hearts, but receive God’s help to open your hearts to it with full attention! Today we say to the Lord, “If you consider us believers, come and stay within us!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel JN 15:26—16:4A

Jesus said to his disciples:
“When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father,
he will testify to me.
And you also testify,
because you have been with me from the beginning.

“I have told you this so that you may not fall away.
They will expel you from the synagogues;
in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you
will think he is offering worship to God.
They will do this because they have not known either the Father or me.
I have told you this so that when their hour comes
you may remember that I told you.”

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