Sixth Sunday of Easter;( 25th May, 2025)

 The truth of Jesus is understood not by observing or studying it from the outside, with an objective and impersonal gaze, but by allowing ourselves to be involved in its event and in its experience. Happy Sunday!

 DOCTRINE AND FAITH 

 (Acts 15:1-2.22-29; Ps 66 (67); Rev 21:10-14.22-23; Jn 14:23-29: Sixth Sunday of Easter; 25th May, 2025)

In these Sundays of Easter Time, we are brought back, by the Gospel of John, to the events that immediately precede the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. The liturgy seems to want to lead us not only into the Cenacle, but into our own life, to the heart of our fears, hconfusion, and disbelief. If it is true that we believe in the risen Jesus, however, we so often experience his absence and the anguish that this distance causes in our lives. This is the atmosphere of the fourteenth chapter of which we read some verses today. Two traits characterize the spiritual climate of the discourses of the Supper; It is worth dwelling briefly on them.

 

The first feature is that these discourses are set in the context of a Supper, which becomes the symbol of a profound communion between Jesus and his disciples. The environment is intimate, interpersonal. We are thus reminded of a crucial dynamic of the Christian experience: the truth of Jesus is understood not by observing or studying it from the outside, with an objective and impersonal gaze, but by allowing ourselves to be involved in its event and in its experience. We know the truth if we are willing to let our life be introduced into a path, into a journey that leads us to know the mystery from within. It lets us know the truth, in the original sense of being able to savour it, enjoy it.

The second feature is the overall climate of these texts. It is marked by what John calls the disturbance of the disciples. The chapter opens with a strong invitation from Jesus: "Do not let your hearts be troubled" (v. 1). Towards the end, in the passage we hear this Sunday, Jesus forcefully repeats: "Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid" (v. 27). Several reasons contribute to creating disturbance and fear; in fact, the disturbances and fears that threaten our human experience and our faith are reflected in them. What we are most interested in observing is how Jesus reacts to the disturbance, the way in which he invites the disciples to overcome it. First of all, there is an appeal to faith: "Have faith in God, have faith also in me" (v. 1). These words resonate at the opening of the chapter.

Then, in our verses, the call to faith is followed by the invitation to remain in love. Faith and love are the foundations of the Easter experience. In an intertwining that is never divisible: faith leads to love and love nourishes faith. In John 14, many promises of Jesus resound concerning the future of the disciples: the possibility of carrying out the works of Jesus and indeed of carrying out greater ones; the gift of praying in the name of Jesus, certain of being heard and answered; the promise of the Spirit as another Paraclete who will remain with us forever; the promise of being able to welcome and remain permanently in the love of Jesus by virtue of his word that protects us if we in turn know how to protect it. The culminating promise, however, is the one we hear this Sunday: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (v. 23). Here we really hear something surprising: the chapter opens with Jesus' promise to go and prepare a dwelling for us with his Father, but then the discourse ends by reversing the image: it will be he who makes our life a dwelling capable of hosting God's visit. "We will come to him and make our home with him." We are the ones who become God's place! Jesus prepares a place for us by making us the place, the dwelling of Trinitarian love, the temple of his glory.

 Describing the future Jerusalem, the Book of Revelation tells us that "it has no need of the sun or of the moon, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb" (Rev 21:23). We must await this future fulfillment, but savouring the way in which it is already beginning to be fulfilled in us. Our personal existence, that of our communities, is already the dwelling place of God, in which that light can dwell that offers us the possibility of seeing and judging the things of all time in a new way. We understand then how vain, foolish and senseless it is to base our faith and our salvation on external signs, such as the circumcision that the Acts tell us about (cf. Acts 15:1), or other signs that we continue to invent in our times, or on human works, such as the works of the Law. Jesus' Easter gives us much more, an incomparably more beautiful and fascinating good: to remain in his love and to allow his love to remain in us, until we become the dwelling place of God.

 

The liturgy of this Sunday does not make us read this chapter to the end. Therefore, we do not listen to the last word of Jesus: "Rise, let us go from here" (v. 31). A paradoxical word, because in fact no one gets up and Jesus continues his speech. What meaning does this invitation have then? Perhaps we can interpret it as an exhortation to get up (a verb of resurrection!) to emerge from our fears and disturbances, from our anguish and resentment... We can and must get up: while remaining in the world, we dwell elsewhere, in that love of Jesus that manifests itself mysteriously in the secret of our life.

 + John I Okoye 

5th Sunday of ordinary time, 9th February, 2025

 The encounter with Jesus is always personal and requires us to leave the anonymity of the crowd to meet him face to face. Happy Sunday!

Doctrine and Faith

(Is 6:1-2a.3-8; Ps 137 (138); 1Cor 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11; 5th Sunday of ordinary time, 9th February, 2025)

In Nazareth, the rejection of men is unable to stop the journey of the word of God which in Jesus continues to be fulfilled elsewhere. Luke's story, which we listen to today, describes to us the effective fulfillment of this word in the life of Peter and the other disciples, who, unlike the Nazarenes, welcome the word of Jesus and give it credit. In fact, they have the poor heart of those who recognize themselves not only with empty nets, but even as sinners, as Simon Peter does. Or as Isaiah does, who-encountering the holiness of God-cannot help but confess his own impurity: «Alas! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips" (Is 6:5). On the contrary, the Nazarenes, we remember, had revealed the hardness of a rich heart because it was full of demands towards Jesus. And those who demand do not know how to trust.

The text that Luke offers us this Sunday is not just a story of vocation; it is the dramatization of what happens when the word of God releases its transforming power in the lives of those who know how to welcome it with faith. We can in fact divide the passage into three small scenes, connected by a common thread whose protagonist is the word of God which becomes flesh in Jesus. In the first scene, Jesus announces the word of God and the crowds listen to it. People crowd around his word, because they understand that it is not like other words, but is capable of giving authentic meaning to life, redeeming it from any illusion or emptiness.

In the second painting the evangelist takes us deeper. From the anonymous and impersonal face of this crowd some faces and some names emerge. The encounter with Jesus is always personal and requires us to leave the anonymity of the crowd to meet him face to face, letting him call us by our name so that we in turn can call him by his name. In particular, for Peter this personal encounter takes place through a different relationship with the word of God. Until now he has listened to it, like the others, confused in the crowd; now this word demands from him a personal and responsible decision, which only him, in his freedom and in the first person, can and must make: "At your word I will cast the nets". Jesus had used a plural: "cast your nets"; Peter responds in the first person "I will cast the nets" (see Luke 5:4-5). Now for Peter it is no longer a question of listening to the word of Jesus like the crowds do; now this word involves him personally and asks him to become the ultimate criterion of his discernment, his judgement, his action. Peter decides to trust Jesus' word and in this way he will be able to see its effectiveness: the nets, previously empty, are filled with an immense quantity of fish. Our relationship with the Lord becomes personalised, and we emerge from the anonymity of the crowd to meet him face to face, every time his word becomes for us a criterion of judgment and action, the foundation of our life; in addition to listening to it, we decide on it, even when it appears useless, ineffective, contradicted by our experience. However, Peter's story does not end at this point, there is a third scene, very short, in which the words of Jesus still resonate, which take on a new and further aspect. From a criterion of judgment and action, it becomes a powerful word that transforms Peter's life, calls him to conversion, promises him a different future, for which it offers itself as the only guarantee: "from now on you will be a fisher of men" (v. 10). After having noted the effectiveness of Jesus' word in the sign of fishing, Peter will have to find it in his own life. Just as that word transformed empty nets into full nets, so it will transform Peter's life: from a fisherman he will become a fisherman of men.

What Peter experiences is an Easter passage. It is being born into a new life; it is the passage from night to day, from empty nets to full nets, from being a simple fisherman to becoming a fisherman of men. Luke also uses the Greek term zōgreus, which means "he who captures the living", and perhaps we can understand: "he who captures men to return them to life". In the Bible the sea is a symbol of death and of every other evil that threatens the life of man. Peter's mission will be to tear men away from this sea which evokes all that is darkness, anguish, negativity - to return them to that fullness of life and joy that only the encounter with the Lord can bring about in the existence of every person. Announcing to the Corinthians the resurrection of Jesus and his revelation to the disciples, Paul goes so far as to exclaim: "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me was not in vain" (1Cor 15:10). Meeting the Risen One, living the experience of Easter means precisely this: allowing his new life to transform our existence. The grace of Easter always fills our empty networks. We have the responsibility to welcome this gift and make it mature as disciples of Christ. The Christian life, as a vocation, is much more than the simple response to a word that calls us. It is welcoming and making effective in us the ever new grace of Easter. 

+ John I Okoye

3rd Sunday in Advent, Year C; 15th December 2024)

 He who is near, comes to live among us: He will free our life from the weeds that compromise it, He will guard the good wheat so that it matures and bears abundant fruit. Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Zephaniah 3:14-17; Is 12:2-6; Phil 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18; 3rd Sunday in Advent, Year C; 15th December 2024)

On this third Sunday of Advent, which the liturgical tradition defines as "Gaudete", starting from the Pauline invitation to always be happy, joy seems explosive and uncontainable. It is expressed first of all in the many imperatives that we hear in Zephaniah: "rejoice"; «shout for joy»; «rejoice and acclaim». "Sing and rejoice", we pray with Isaiah in the responsory of this liturgy of the Word. We have already said it: even the apostle Paul, ("I repeat it to you”) insistently urges a joy that must "always" characterize the life of believers. The vocabulary of joy today is therefore multiple and varied, it is colored with different verbs and adjectives, but its motivation is only one: the closeness of the Lord, his coming among us, his remaining among his people. “The Lord your God is a mighty savior among you,” announces Zephaniah (3:17). Paul echoes him: "The Lord is near" (Phil 4:5).

Luke's Gospel passage seems to act as a counterpoint to this joyful and sunny luminosity, which once again shows us the figure of John the Baptist, with his radical and demanding announcement: John, in fact, presents the Coming One as the one who (holds in his hand the shovel to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn; but he will burn the straw with unquenchable fire" (Luke 3:17). The contrast, however, is only apparent. We can even discern in these words of the Baptist the tone of promise rather than that of threat. He who comes is a powerful savior, Zephaniah announces, and his salvation manifests itself as liberation: he burns and eliminates everything in our life that is weed, chaff, straw; while he collects and eliminates, he safeguards the good wheat the soil of our existence will be able to produce.

Yes, we know it well: our life is often marked by many contradictions, which intertwine with each other to form a tangle that, alone, we cannot untangle. We too have the experience, described by Paul in the Letter to the Romans, of not being able to do the good we would like and, on the contrary, doing the evil we do not want to do (see Rom 7:14-25). We must recognize our inconsistencies, falls, inability to complete the paths of spiritual life that we design with such generosity. Here then is the happy news that the Baptist proclaims; he who is near, comes to live among us, brings with him this promise: he will free our life from the weeds that compromise it, he will guard the good wheat so that it matures and bears abundant fruit. Also, for this reason the Baptist presents Jesus as "stronger than me". If the baptism in water that he imparted was only a sign to recall the need for penance and conversion (that path of sanctification that we desire to follow but which often leaves us with the bitterness of our failures and the emptiness of our failures) the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire will have the strength to accomplish in us what, left to ourselves and our vain voluntarisms, we are unable to bring to a successful conclusion.

Thus, John responds to the crowds who question him, and his answer goes far beyond the question, offering a deeper and more decisive look. To those who ask him: "What should we do?", John does not limit himself to indicating some signs of conversion, to be placed in ordinary life, so that the word of God and the newness of the Gospel take shape and flesh in it. He also announces that what everyone must do finally becomes possible precisely because he who comes, makes himself close to our lives with all his power of salvation. Yes, the Lord is close: he is close to our weakness with his strength, he is close to our sin with his forgiveness, he is close to our desire with his promise of fulfillment, he is close to the tangle of our inconsistencies with his word which gives order and transparency to our lives.

The announced joy then produces some fruits in us: it frees us from fear (do not fear), Zephaniah announces - since we can hope for a fulfillment that does not come from us but is given to us from above; it makes us lovable: “may your lovability be known to all”, exhorts Paul - because it allows us to be simple and transparent, no longer tangled up in our vain efforts and in our inconsistencies; It makes us people capable of hope and expectation. Thanks to John's preaching, in fact, "the people were waiting" (v.15). Joy generates waiting and waiting is filled with joy. Evangelical joy, in fact, is never just the enjoyment of what we know or what already satisfies our desire: it is always waiting for him who comes to surprise our life with a gift greater than our own hope. And it is an expectation in which our joy mixes with the very joy of God. Zephaniah, in fact, in addition to announcing our joy, reveals to us the very joy of God: «he will rejoice over you... he will rejoice over you with shouts of joy" (3:17). God rejoices over us. This is true joy, its truest and most stable foundation. We rejoice because God comes among us; but even before that, it is God himself who rejoices in dwelling among his people. Our deepest happiness lies in recognizing with amazement that God desires nothing more than this: to share his joy with us. 

+ John I. Okoye

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, 23rd June, 2024

 

The old things, the ones that scare us, are gone; behold, new things have been born: the new things of faith and hope.” Happy Sunday!

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Job 38,1.8-11; Psalm 106 (107); 2Cor 5,14-17; Mark 4,35-41; 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, 23rd June, 2024)

God reveals himself to Job as the one who has power even over the indomitable powers of the sea, which in the eyes of a Jew were a symbol of everything that man could not dominate and by which he felt threatened. God, on the other hand, does not annihilate the threat of evil, represented metaphorically by the sea waves, but controls it, places an insurmountable limit on it, closing the sea “between two doors” and telling it: “You will reach this far and no further and here the pride of your waves will be shattered.”(Job 38.11). This power of God is manifested in Jesus, who is able to threaten the wind and command the sea: “Be quiet, calm down!” (Mark 4,39). We easily understand the amazement that seized his disciples and the question that arises from it: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (4.41). It is the same fear that one feels when one is placed before God and his mystery, which now transpires from the humanity of Jesus, whose authoritative word, whose powerful gestures seem to transcend human possibilities. A crucial passage in the life of faith is manifested here, very similar to that experienced by Israel at the Red Sea, when she was called to convert from the fear of the sea to the fear of God (see Exodus 14,31). In a similar way, on the boat the disciples must convert from the terror of the storm, the fruit of their disbelief, to the fear of Jesus, another name for a faith that allows itself to be questioned by his mysterious identity. The episode is narrated by Mark at the conclusion of the chapter on parables. What happens in this boat is also a parable of the Kingdom. Jesus sleeps in the stern as the seed rests in the ground. The farmer cannot do anything in this evening, however, whether he sleeps or watches, “at night or during the day, the seed sprouts and grows. How, he himself does not know” (Mark 4,27). The sower must have faith in the power of the seed, which seems inactive, but instead mysteriously releases its vitality. In the same way the disciples must learn to trust in Jesus and in his salvation, even when he sleeps. Furthermore, his ability to sleep just as “a great storm of wind broke out and the waves were breaking into the boat, so much so that it was now full” (4,37), is surprising. The disciples are terrified. We easily understand their reaction. What appears disconcerting instead is the sleep of Jesus, who “stuck on the pillow and slept” (4,38).

How can you sleep in such a situation? The disciples interpret this sleep as disinterest, to the point of waking him up with a poorly concealed rebuke: “Master, don’t you care that we are lost?” (4,38). Jesus’ sleep, however, is not so much an expression of carelessness as of trust. Even in the midst of danger he remains like a child who can fall asleep confidently in the arms of his father or mother. It is the sleep of those who know they are protected.

And it is this faith that he lives first, a faith that has already been able to convert the fear of the sea into the fear of God, and he would like to share this his attitude with his disciples. “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (4,40). Perhaps, we must understand not so much “you still have no faith in me” as “you still have no faith in the Father, like me?”. Why, don’t you abandon yourselves too, with trust, in the hands of him who wants to keep you? Why don’t you too learn to pray like the psalmist: “In peace I lie down and immediately fall asleep, / for you alone, Lord, confidently make me rest”? (Psalm 4,9). The sea and the wind obey the word with which Jesus threatens them. However, before speaking to the wind and the sea, Jesus speaks to the disciples and then addresses their fear. He seems to want them to first overcome the violence of fear, and then also overcome the violence of the storm. As if the real danger were fear, or the disbelief from which it is generated. How not to be afraid, if life is threatened and those who can save are asleep? Isn’t Jesus’ reproach out of place, or excessively harsh? And perhaps a different reading is possible.

When we read the Gospel stories we also experience this difficulty: we focus on words, phrases, statements, without being able to immediately grasp the tone of voice, or the inclination of the gaze, or the light in the eyes of the person who said them. With what tone does Jesus address his disciples? Is it the tone of a harsh rebuke? Or rather is it the tone of someone who has compassion for their difficulty in believing? Is it the tone of someone who, rather than scolding, takes tender care of their and our fear? If poverty, smallness, fragility are places of God’s care in Jesus, even little faith, poor and naked faith, cannot help but be so. The Lord, who has mercy on us and on our lives, wants to free us not so much from a storm, but from the wrong attitudes with which we so often live in moments of crisis, confusion and danger. We are not spared from going through the storm, we are given the gift of doing so with a heart full of the fear of God rather than of fear of the moment of difficulty in which we find ourselves; with the heart of one who sleeps the sleep of a trust. By dominating the sea, closing it “between two doors” and setting “a limit” to it (see Job 38,8-10), Jesus repeats God’s creative gesture, narrated in the first chapter of Genesis. In him the Father brings about a new creation, or – as Paul reminds the Corinthians more precisely – he calls us to become “a new Creature”. The old things, the ones that scare us, are gone; behold, new things have been born: the new things of faith and hope (see 2 Cor 5,17). + John I. Okoye.

(Graphic by Chukwubike)