Fifth Sunday of Easter Read more
Fifth Sunday of Easter
First Reading
Acts 14,21-27
Having preached the good news in that town and made a considerable number of disciples, they went back through Lystra, Iconium and Antioch. They put fresh heart into the disciples, encouraging them to persevere in the faith, saying, 'We must all experience many hardships before we enter the kingdom of God.' In each of these churches they appointed elders, and with prayer and fasting they commended them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe. They passed through Pisidia and reached Pamphylia. Then after proclaiming the word at Perga they went down to Attalia and from there sailed for Antioch, where they had originally been commended to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. On their arrival they assembled the church and gave an account of all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith to the gentiles.
Psalmody
Psalm 145
Antiphon
Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
My soul, give praise to the Lord;
I will praise the Lord all my days,
make music to God while I live.
Put no trust in princes,
in mortal men in whom there is no help.
Take their breath, they return to clay
and their plans that day come to nothing.
He is happy who is helped by Jacob's God,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who alone made heaven and earth,
the seas and all they contain.
It is he who keeps faith for ever,
who is just to those who are oppressed.
It is he who gives bread to the hungry,
the Lord, who sets prisoners free,
the Lord who gives sight to the blind,
who raises up those who are bowed down,
the Lord who protects the stranger
and upholds the widow and orphan.
It is the Lord who loves the just
but thwarts the path of the wicked.
The Lord will reign for ever,
Zion's God, from age to age.
Second Reading
Revelation 21,1-5
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had disappeared now, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride dressed for her husband. Then I heard a loud voice call from the throne, 'Look, here God lives among human beings. He will make his home among them; they will be his people, and he will be their God, God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness or pain. The world of the past has gone.' Then the One sitting on the throne spoke. 'Look, I am making the whole of creation new. Write this, "What I am saying is trustworthy and will come true."
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 13,31-33.34-35
When he had gone, Jesus said: Now has the Son of man been glorified, and in him God has been glorified. If God has been glorified in him, God will in turn glorify him in himself, and will glorify him very soon. Little children, I shall be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and, as I told the Jews, where I am going, you cannot come. I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you. It is by your love for one another, that everyone will recognise you as my disciples.
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
The Gospel reports the first sentences of Jesus' speech to the apostles in the upper room. He turns to the disciples to introduce them to the mystery of his glorification, in the mystery of Easter. It is to them that he is about to entrust his Gospel. He looks tenderly at them: "Little children, I am with you only a little longer" (Jn 13:33). It is the only time Jesus calls them in this way. He is about to leave them for good and there is a unique dimension in that relationship that marks also our faith that is founded on their witness. In hearing that Jesus is about to leave them, they are perturbed. Maybe even for just a moment they think back to those three years they spent with him: how much their lives have changed! And how much the lives of many other people, mostly of the sick, the poor, and the sinners have changed! Was all this about to finish? Jesus understands their being lost and adds: "You will look for me ... "Where I am going, you cannot come." Jesus knows that, despite their fragility and weakness, his disciples will look for him so that they can see him again and listen to him again, to be again with him. In this the Eleven are an example for us who often forget to look for Jesus, to listen to his words and put them into practice. There is an affective and relational dimension of the faith in Jesus that we cannot omit. Faith means meeting, loving each other, living together the mystery of Easter. Jesus himself makes it clear with the commandment of love: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. Jesus goes beyond the commandment written in Leviticus: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (19:18). The measure of love is not the one that comes from us, but the same love with which Jesu loves us. This commandment is new, in the sense of ultimate, definite, valid for ever. We are illiterate of this love. The world is a desert of love. It is Jesus who teaches it to us and gives it to us in the measure that the Gospel indicates: "Having loved his ones who were in the world, he loved them till the end," till the cross. The disciples understood almost nothing. Right after these words, they abandoned him. But after Easter they experienced what Jesus had asked them: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Jesus' love transfigures us, it makes us able to console those who are in sadness, to heal those who are sick, to sustain those who are poor, to welcome those who are rejected, to speak of peace in the hells of wars. It is an attracting love. This is why it does not change only us, but also the world.
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
