5th Sunday of Easter; Year A, 2017

May the risen Christ always accept your joys, sorrows, endevours and efforts of your life as spiritual sacrifices which he unites with his sufferings and passion as acceptable sacrifices pleasing to God the Father. Happy Sunday! + John I. Okoye

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Acts 6, 1-7;  1 Peter 2, 4-9; John 14, 1-12; 5th Sunday of Easter; Year A,  2017)

            One of the questions on the first page of the Igbo Catechism of the fifties is: Why did God create you? The answer goes this way: God created me to know him, love him, and adore him so as to live with him forever in the heavenly bliss. The big question now is: how often have we meditated on the implication of the above statement and consequently given it the serious thought it deserves? Or do we only give lip service to such statements on which our whole destiny depends? Perhaps, due to our paucity of faith, we do not even believe what we recite; that is to say, we do not believe in life after death. Jesus’ mission on earth is to make the assertion possible for us and that is why in today’s Gospel reading he says: I am now going to prepare a place for you and after I had gone to prepare you a place I shall return to take you with me. Jesus could not have expressed in a simpler and clearer way the existence of another world after this and the reality of Paradise, that is to say, a place of happiness without end which consists, essentially of always being with Christ in the house of the Father. It is to be borne in mind that Christ prepares a place for us through his suffering, passion and resurrection. The place he prepares for us is in his martyred and risen body and precisely his heart which he left open for us to enter. We admire the generosity and love of Christ, who paid costly for preparing a place for us. Christ has not only prepared a place for us, he is also, the one who will lead us into it as he affirms: I am the way, the truth and the life. Rephrasing it one could say: I am the Way because I am the Truth and the Life.  Jesus, the Word-made-flesh is by his nature Truth and Life. He is Truth because his coming into the world proves that God is true to his promises and because he teaches truth about God. He is Life because from eternity he shares in divine life with the Father (John 1,4), and because he allows us, through grace, to partake of that divine life. We see Jesus doing a lot for us. He is our destination and at the same time the way to reach there. Actually, we have to follow him just as we follow a path; we have to imitate him. We imitate and follow his example if we live in love as He did. His love is rare and generous. This type of love is not easy to realize. Love attracts but generous love brings fear for it is costly. However, Jesus gives the grace to advance in this type of generous love with the energy and force that emanate from his passion and resurrection. So there is no other way to go to the house of the Father and happiness of Paradise except through Jesus. Jesus is not only the way, but a unique way. As the unique way he has special rapport with the Father. Jesus himself affirms: To have seen me is to have seen the Father…I am in the Father and the Father is me. Note that the Father and Jesus are united not only in being but also in action. Thus, God’s presence is manifest where Christ is and in the works of Christ; it is the Father who speaks and acts in whatever Jesus does. Therefore, if we want to know God, we need to contemplate Jesus, listen to and follow him as his disciple. In this way we strengthen our relationship with God and gradually he will reveal himself to us in his glory of love.

 

Jesus goes on to deposit a surprising and challenging statement: Whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works because I am going to the Father. Yes, it can be argued that the disciples performed more extensive work than Jesus who limited his area of operation in Palestine. But let it be borne in mind that in reality the works of the Church are, basically, those of the risen Christ himself. As baptized Christians, bound for heaven we are called to realize the work of Christ in the world but more especially in our lives. Every Christian has the vocation to do the work of Christ, in union with him through prayer and active charity. In deed we need to have bold ambition in our lives: we have to do divine work in union with Christ. In our lives in our families, at our place of work and our relationship with others, we have to do divine work transforming our environments gradually and according to the design of the Father. We hope to achieve this, thanks to our confident prayer and union with Jesus in generous love.

            St. Peter in the second reading tried to give theological explanation why every Christian, according to the gift he/she has and according to the needs of the community, has to offer some services. He writes: Set yourself close to him (Christ) so that you too, the holy priesthood that offers the spiritual sacrifices which Jesus Christ has made acceptable to God may be living stones making a spiritual house. Our union with Christ has its origin at our Baptism when we not only enter into definitive and profound union with Christ but also through which we became members of the spiritual builders of the Church. Christians are living stones that must be united to Christ by faith and in grace. This unity will ensure that the building is solid, and a suitable place to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. The closer their union with Christ is, the stronger will the building be. In this holy people, there is only one priest, Jesus Christ,  and one sacrifice, that which he offered on the cross and which is renewed in the Holy Mass. But all Christians, through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation share in Christ’s priesthood and are, thereby, enabled to take active part in divine worship. This is what is called the priesthood of all the faithful as distinctive from the ministerial priesthood.

    The life of every Christian should be an offer to God, a priestly offer because it is made to God through Jesus Christ. Peter calls it spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. Our vocation as Christians is to offer to God all we do during the day so that our lives would be united to that of Christ. There is another way we can make our spiritual sacrifices more active within the liturgy. This is to offer up ourselves in every Mass, ourselves as well as all our sorrows and joys since our last Mass during the offertory along with our gifts and those of the church calling on God almighty to unite our offerings with that of his Son, Jesus Christ through the ministry of celebrating priest.

    The church even further challenges all of us, especially our Christian Faithful to sanctify the world through their lives when she advocates: All their works, prayers, and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accomplished in the Spirit—indeed even the hardship of life if patently borne —all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. In the celebration of the Eucharist they may most fittingly be offered to the Father along with the body of the Lord. Therefore,  worshipping everywhere by their holy actions, the laity consecrate the world itself to God (Vatican II, Lumen gentium, 34). Happy Sunday! +John I. Okoye

graphics  by chukwubike