What Is Our Word of Exhortation?, Fourth Thursday of Easter, May 7, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter
May 16, 2019
Acts 13:13-25, Ps 89, Jn 13:16-20

The following points were made in the homily: 

• Yesterday was officially the half-way point of the Easter Season. Starting today, for the entirety of the second half of the 50 days of Easter, we will ponder Jesus’ words during the Last Supper, looking at them from through the prism of the Resurrection. We start with something quite shocking in today’s Gospel. He swears an oath and says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” This is not an “intentional” point but in some deep way a sacramental-ontological one: the reason why in receiving us others receive Christ is because they’re receiving us-in-communion-with-Christ, and because of that communion they’re always receiving God the Father because Christ is in perpetual communion with the Father. When we are sent out by Christ to proclaim the Gospel, we’re not just proclaiming words but in our own flesh we are bringing Christ — or at least we’re supposed to be! — and hence in accepting us they are welcoming Christ’s Mystical Body that is in organic communion with Christ the Head of that Body.
• We see this with in the scene with Saints Paul and Barnabas in today’s first reading. Saints Paul and Barnabas are asked by the leader of the Synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia, “My brothers, if one of you has a word of exhortation for the people, please speak.” God wants us all to have that “word of exhortation” from him and wants us to give it. We’re called, like St. Peter wrote in his first letter, always to be willing to give the reason for the hope we contain within us. In the Psalm today, we prayed, “Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord” and professed that “through all generations my mouth shall proclaim your faithfulness.” The Lord wants us to be so inspired by our consecrated communion with him that we’re always singing of his goodness, to us, to the world, to others, and to proclaim his fidelity to all his promises. Many times in life rather than singing of the Lord’s goodness, we’re can give into temptations to complain monotonously about our problems, or to criticize, or to spread bad news rather than Good. Many times rather than giving a word of encouragement we give discourses of discouragement. Rather than sharing a word of exhortation, we’re often deflating others with pessimism. Rather than praising God’s faithfulness, we’re praising ourselves. A Christian who grasps the meaning of Easter, who lives a new life in communion with the Lord, is a Christian who’s singing with joy even in the midst of challenge and hardship, and that’s the type of hymn the Lord wants all of us to be singing each day in chorus.
• In the Gospel, Jesus, as part of the many ordination instructions he gave on Holy Thursday that would be remembered and put into action after his’ resurrection, talks about the messenger and the one who sent him, saying as I mentioned above that “whoever receives the one I send receives me and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” Jesus to some degree — we don’t want to take it too far, but we do need to ponder his words — is making others’ reception of the Father and the Son who he sent at least partially dependent on their receiving those whom he sends out, meaning us. And how can they receive us — and the Son and the Father as a consequence — unless we give ourselves to be received? To give this word of exhortation, to sing the goodness of the Lord, to proclaim his faithfulness, to continue Jesus’ mission as his ambassadors, this is meant to become the driving force of Christian life. We must make the effort that Christian missionary work requires.
• We see that effort concealed in the beginning of today’s first reading. Pamphylia, where Saints Paul and Barnabas landed, was a malaria infested swamp. It would be a little like traversing a shallow Everglades. But they did it. Then there was a perilous journey 3,600 feet up a rock face to Antioch in Pisidia, one of the ancient world’s most dangerous climbs. To make matters worse, the path upward was full of bandits. But Paul and Barnabas courageously persevered because of their hunger to share the Gospel, to share God, to share the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and the whole Church with those they had never met. Proclaiming the Gospel, as we know from the sagas of so many missionaries in every age,  is seldom easy work. It requires zeal. It requires effort. But as Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it.” The question for us is: if Paul and Barnabas could overcome so many dangers to proclaim the Gospel to total strangers, will we overcome the much smaller impediments to proclaim the Gospel to our family, friends and neighbors, to the people who call on the phone, to the people who visit? What efforts are we making to share our faith, to share our communion with Jesus? At the end of our life, what “Acts” will be able to be written about our own missionary journeys? Will a heavenly chronicler be able to list the swamps we’ve traversed and the mountains and obstacles we’ve surmounted?
• The second thing we learn in today’s readings is a basic outline of how to give this word of exhortation and sing of the favors of the Lord. Odds are that when we proclaim the Gospel, we’re announcing it to a group other than Jews in the Diaspora! But St. Paul gives us a model we can apply to every situation. Today he beings a 26 verse homily. Today we have the first 13 verses. Tomorrow we’ll hear the next 8. And we’ll have the last five for homework! But throughout this “word of exhortation,” we see how St. Paul puts the Gospel into a context of what is relevant for his listeners.
  • He begins by discussing his listeners’ hopes and expectations, their longing for a Messiah, so that he can show how Jesus is the fulfillment of their deep desires. He shows there’s a purpose to history.
  • Second, he declares forthrightly that Jesus is the fulfillment of their hopes.
  • Third, he discusses that even though Jesus is their hope, many, in blind folly, rejected him, but that rejection didn’t have the final word, because God raised him from the dead, showing that hope placed in him is never in vain.
  • Finally, Paul makes that news actual, bringing us to a moment of decision. He describes how this is Good News, joy, for all of us who accept Jesus and begin to live by his ways — and bad news for those who disobey that summons.
• This is the pattern of proclamation for us in every age. We begin with the context of people’s aspirations and hopes, how Jesus fulfills them, how God has triumphed over people’s sins and rejection in the past, and how he wants us to share in that victory, but we must choose to respond to that incredible offer. St. Paul would elsewhere describe his own conversion and how he was among those who initially opposed, but came to grasp this life and that’s what motivated him to share Jesus with others, to exhort them to learn from his mistakes, to sing of the favor of the Lord’s mercy and invite others to join that chorus of praise. Likewise it’s from our experience of mercy, from our failure to correspond fully and yet being given a second, or third, or 70th times 7th chance, that we find the passion to share that same gift.
• Jesus gave us the words of today’s Gospel during the Last Supper, right after he washed his disciples’ feet. As we prepare to enter in time into that new and eternal Passover and receive Jesus’ very risen life inside, we ask that we will be “blessed” by “doing this in memory” of Him as we are sent out by him, with him, to exhort and encourage the world!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
JN 13:16-20

When Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, he said to them:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master
nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.
If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it.
I am not speaking of all of you.
I know those whom I have chosen.
But so that the Scripture might be fulfilled,
The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me.
From now on I am telling you before it happens,
so that when it happens you may believe that I AM.
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send
receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”