Testimony Together with the Holy Spirit, Sixth Monday of Easter, May 6, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter
May 6, 2024
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 Jesus continues to teach us, in the continuation of his Last Supper Discourse in John 15, the means by which we will remain in him as branches on the vine and remain in his and the Father’s love by keeping his commandment to love others as he has loved us, to the point of laying down our life for them. On Saturday he told us that we would be persecuted and hated by all. In today’s Gospel, he says that we will be expelled from houses of worship and that people will kill us thinking that they’re doing a divine service. These will all be means to enhance our trust in him and lead to our bearing greater fruit. He says that he has told us all of this — on the eve of his Crucifixion, but which the Church looks back on now in the light of the Resurrection — so that “when their hour comes you may remember that I told you” and “not fall away” out of fear. In the midst of those challenging words, he does give us an extraordinary remedy: God 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, “he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.” We will not be orphans. We will be assisted by God himself to give a joint testimony of fidelity to Christ and enter into his faithful witness to the Father. This joint testimony, no matter the circumstances, is the heart of the Christian life.
• 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 the Gospel. On Saturday, we heard how the Holy Spirit prevented them from going to Ephesus (the Province of Asia) or to Bithynia (north central Turkey today) so that they could promptly respond to the dream whereby a European from Macedonia was begging them to come to share the Gospel. Having arrived, Paul and his companions went where the Jews would normally assemble on the Sabbath when there was no Synagogue, by the river. Even though obviously none of these evangelists had been with Jesus physically “from the beginning” of his public ministry, unlike those in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday, 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 one of the Holy Spirit’s tasks was to remind them of everything Jesus had taught. Jesus, similarly, has had each of us in mind from that same beginning and the same Holy Spirit has been sent to us.
• 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 because the necessary purple dye was so costly to obtain; it had to be harvested one drop at a time from a toxic 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.” Not her ears, but her heart. It means she was interiorizing within 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. 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 the Pope and the 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, Silas 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 that changed her life, changed her home, changed everything. And she began to give witness to Christian hospitality together with the Holy Spirit immediately.
• Today at Mass, as we prepare to enter into the Paschal Mystery, 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 — despite all that Jesus had done to try to get them ready for his hour — 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 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: 

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