Easter Week 5 Thursday

Readings: Acts15:7-21; Psalm 96; John 15:9-11

Jesus Christ wanted his apostles to become responsible leaders of the community of believers. He did not, however, leave them a blueprint for every possible situation and circumstance. As free, responsible, thinking and choosing men and women the first Christian leaders had to decide how to go about their work for Christ, how to organize the community, how to express the teaching of Jesus in different languages and thought-forms, and how to respond to opposition, persecution and distorted presentations of the gospel of Jesus.

The early Church believed that the Holy Spirit was with them and they believed that Peter had been given a special role in the leadership of the community. So from the earliest times they met frequently in 'councils' or gatherings of Christian leaders. Meeting together, discussing, reporting, sharing experiences, deciding together what ought to be done or said: this is how human beings have always carried on their business.

The Acts of the Apostles recounts many such meetings of Christian leaders: when they decided to appoint 'deacons'; when they wondered whether to trust Paul after his conversion; when the leaders at Antioch decided to send Paul and Barnabas on a missionary journey; when Paul met with the leaders of the Christian communities at Ephesus.

A controversy arose in the early Church about how much Jewish law the new converts from outside Judaism should be required to observe. As a result, a meeting was called in Jerusalem to sort out the problem. Peter, Barnabas, and Paul all spoke. So did James, the leader of the original community at Jerusalem. As a result of this 'council' of 'the apostles and the elders, with the whole church', the unity of the Christian community was preserved, its understanding of the gospel was broadened, its policy was clarified, and its mission was extended. The story of the so-called ‘council of Jerusalem’ is told in Acts 15.

Since that time, many Councils have been held by the church. Basically, these are councils of bishops, even though other church leaders and members are involved also. There have been local councils to deal with local problems. There have been general, universal or, as they are called, ecumenical councils to deal with questions affecting the whole church.

Many of these ecumenical councils have been concerned with aspects of Christian doctrine. The Council of Chalcedon (451) succeeded in expressing the doctrine of Christ as ‘truly God and truly man’ in a way that did justice to the church's faith. Other councils were more concerned with the day-to-day running of the church, while the Council of Trent (1545-1553) responded to the Protestant reformation by introducing an extensive reform.

More recently there have been developments in the type of councils occurring in the church. Vatican II (1962-1965) was basically a 'pastoral' council concerned with bringing up-to-date the church's ways of living and preaching the gospel. It involved a huge number of bishops as well as theologians, lay people and non-Catholic observers.

A Synod of Bishops takes place every few years. It is a representative group of the bishops and others and it concerns itself with pressing issues in the church's life: for example, justice in the world (1971), the family (1980), the laity (1987) or religious life (1994), more recently the Eucharist (2005), the Word of God (2008) and the new evangelization (2012).

National conferences of bishops, priests and laity have taken place in many countries and some of these have produced important documents and made important decisions. In the current reflection on the government of the Church sparked by Benedict's resignation and Francis' election many people believe that the best way forward is a strengthening of local government in the Church, giving more autonomy and responsibility to local colleges and synods of bishops. The experience of the Irish Church, for example, shows that synods of bishops were important in re-establishing Church life in the country after the centuries of persecution.

With Pope Francis a new form of synod took place, beginning in 2023 and ending with a second session in 2024. This was a synod on 'synodality', in other words on the ways in which the communion of the Church is strengthened by bishops and representatives of all sections of the Church meeting together to discuss the problems of the day. The emphasis was on listening and not so much on deciding, and a series of reflection papers was developed on the basis of the discussions that took place. It remains to be seen whether Pope Leo will continue this process.

So councils continue in the church in various forms, and the central role of the Pope in them is clear. An ecumenical council, or a synod of bishops, only takes place when convoked by the Pope as the successor of Saint Peter. Local synods become authoritative for the Church when their decisions have been accepted and approved by the Pope. A time of ‘council’ is still regarded as a time for urgent prayer to the Holy Spirit who guides the church on its way. Even though the Spirit sometimes works through individual, prophetic, figures, the Church believes that the Spirit works also, and normally, through the dialogue, discussion, reflection and decisions of groups of Christian leaders gathered in council.

Easter Week 5 Wednesday

Readings: Acts 15:1-6; Psalm 122; John 15:1-8

Visiting family in Australia some years ago gave me the opportunity also to visit - and in some cases to re-visit - some famous vineyards. The Australians, with good reason, are very proud of their wines. It was a chance not just to enjoy the fruits of the vineyards but to learn more about the care of the vines, the preparation of the ground, the blending and storing of the wines, about the whole art of viniculture which is a very interesting world in itself,

One thing that struck me on this visit was the length of time it sometimes takes for some vines to produce good fruit. We read in the gospels about a farmer who decides to give his crops another year, and if they fail again they will be cut down and thrown away. But a vinedresser cannot be as impatient or short-sighted as that. They must sometimes wait five, ten, twenty years before some vines begin to produce fruit that can be used.

It is easy - and encouraging - to bring that aspect to bear on what Jesus says about vines in today's gospel. All vines will be cut, either to be thrown away or to be pruned, and perhaps it will not be immediately obvious to us which kind of cut we are receiving. We trust that it is with the intention of pruning so that at some future date we will be fruitful. It is a way of understanding the suffering that comes to us: it is a discipline, a kind of schooling, which if properly received can lead to great things in the future.

Likewise encouraging is the patience of the vinedresser. If Jesus chooses to compare us to branches of the vine we can assume not only that he knew something about the craft but that this patience is part of what he wants to teach us. 'Remain in me' is his message to us. Do not lose trust or confidence that all will be well. And even if for now we do not see any great fruitfulness in ourselves, trust in the vinedresser, for it is to the glory of the Father, who is himself the vinedresser, that he, the Son, is working. So he will be more anxious than we that we bear much fruit.

And here is another, perhaps the most, encouraging aspect of it. For it is Christ himself who is the vine of which we are the branches. It is his life that is flowing in us. Of course we can place obstacles to its flourishing but any fruit we do come to bear will be on account of him. Without him we can do nothing. Cut off from him we can do nothing. Which is why we must remain in him, and be patient.

Paul and Barnabas have been bearing fruit in the Lord's vineyard through their preaching mission. Now another kind of attention is required, another kind of work, to care for the vineyard in a way that probably seemed less exciting than their itinerant preaching. Today we hear about what is sometimes called the 'council of Jerusalem', a meeting to consider issues that continued to rumble on in the church. They were faced with questions of viniculture, we can say. How to blend Jew and Gentile to make a new community? How is it to happen? How graft these new branches onto the ancient vine of Israel?

The Church needed patience and wisdom and the other gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to care well for the vineyard at that moment. Its task was to encourage the new growth and to facilitate the spread of the word in new territories. This meeting or council of the apostles served to prepare the way for the fruitfulness which the Word inevitably brings about. Many of the participants did not live to see that fruitfulness but so it is with vines - those who sow and plant do not necessarily see the fruit to which they have, nevertheless, made an essential contribution.

Easter Week 5 Tuesday

Readings: Acts 14:19-28; Psalm 145; John 14:27-31a

Today's first reading contains the phrase 'door of faith' which gives its name to the apostolic letter of Benedict XVI that opened the Year of Faith which the Church celebrated in 2012-2013. With these words Acts summarises what God did with Paul and Barnabas in their first missionary journey: he opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Itinerant, charismatic, preachers, they brought the Gospel firstly to the Jewish communities of Asia Minor, and then to any Gentiles who were prepared to listen. Their message was that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah promised in the Old Testament, that he is in fact the Son of God, that salvation is in his name alone, and that his death and resurrection have transformed the relationship between human beings and God. Those who, through the preaching of the apostles, became convinced of its truth were baptised for the forgiveness of their sins. They were then to live according to this new Way, by prayer, mutual love, sharing goods, celebrating the Eucharist, and bearing witness to their Lord.

Not all of them were called to follow Paul, Barnabas, and the other apostles, as itinerant preachers and founders of churches. Some of them were called to that - Timothy, Titus, Silas, and others, whose work is recorded in the Acts and in the Epistles of Paul. But most of them remained where they were, living in their families and carrying on their work, 'ordinary' Christians who believed in Christ and sought to live their faith and its demands in the course of their 'ordinary' lives.

In fact this passage from Acts is one of the first in which we hear of the Church getting itself organised. Paul appointed presbyters in each Church, we are told. To use a later language, he ordained priests. These stayed behind as the leaders of the community, adapting a form of government borrowed from Judaism. The solemnity of this moment of ordination or appointment is shown by the fact that Paul and Barnabas prayed and fasted before making their decisions. Likewise, the church at Antioch had prayed and fasted before laying hands on Paul and Barnabas, deputing them for the missionary journey. We see how it is the Church that appoints its leaders, praying for the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit when it makes its choices, praying (and fasting!) in preparation for this task.

The churches begin to know peace: we are told this from time to time in the Acts of the Apostles. But the peace that came to them through this new faith was of the kind described by Jesus in today's gospel reading. It is peace not as the world gives but as the Risen Lord gives, something deeper, more enduring, more mysterious, often paradoxical. It can exist along with rejection and persecution, as Paul and Barnabas discovered: as they shake the dust off their feet on leaving Antioch in Pisidia they are filled with joy and the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:51-52). Their faith gave them patience and perseverance to continue in their mission of encouraging and strengthening the believers, exhorting them all to persevere in the faith. Just as it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and so enter into his glory, so 'it is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God' (Acts 14:22).

The readings today sketch for us a picture of the developing Church. The community of believers is missionary and domestic, itinerant and structured, local and universal, in the world, clearly, but always somehow not of the world, a Church welcomed by some and rejected by others, bearing a wonderful promise of grace and peace, but, for whatever reasons, provoking rejection and anger. Do not be troubled or afraid, Jesus tells the disciples, my going to the Father is a reason for joy because I will be with the Father, and 'the Father is greater than I'.

Easter Week 5 Monday

Readings: Acts 14:5-18; Psalm 115; John 14:21-26

Paul and Barnabas are on a roller coaster as they travel around Asia Minor preaching the gospel. In one moment they are in danger of being stoned and they make themselves scarce. In the next moment they are in danger of being deified as people prepare to sacrifice animals to them. The interruption of the holy generates fear and awe, leading human beings to seek either to expel the cause of such feelings or to include it somehow within their established way of thinking and living.

Faith (which Paul sees in the crippled man) is a door, an opening, a vision on to another landscape, but one which remains largely unclear and mysterious. ('Now I see in a glass, darkly.') Some of faith's manifestations encourage us to include it, to welcome and embrace it: the healing of a crippled man, for example. In other moments we will want to turn from this call to believe and drive it away: when it shows us up as crippled men and women, for example, and directs us to restructure our world and to revise radically our ways of thinking and living.

All of this happens with the preaching of the gospel: the crippled jump up and walk while the settled moral and doctrinal convictions of Jews and Gentiles are relativised and they are asked to open up to a new reality. They are instructed to get up, shake off a paralysis they may or may not have been aware of, and walk in a new way.

Jesus speaks of this new reality, this new way of walking, in today's gospel reading. First and last it is love, a love of his word, a love reciprocated because it originates not in the believer but in the one who speaks that word ('this is the love I mean, not our love for God but God's love for us'). The one who speaks that word to us is Jesus who teaches us, however, that the word he speaks originates not in himself but in the Father who sent him. Together they will love the ones who keep their word, they will come and make their home with them.

Now Jesus reveals more, teaching us that this word will be carried forward by another advocate, another who is to be sent by the Father, and by Jesus returned to the Father. This is the Holy Spirit, the power of love abiding in those who believe to ensure that they are fully taught, that they remember the fulness of the Lord's word.

This is the irruption of the holy promised by the preaching of the gospel. 'Irruption' seems too violent a word for it, this coming of Father, Word and Spirit to dwell in us, to make their home in us, to abide (what a beautiful word that is!), to consolidate in us the word breathing love which God is. The Christian tradition will speak of it as the indwelling of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity or even as the human being's participation in the divine nature. (So the Lycaonians who wanted to worship Paul and Barnabas were not entirely mistaken even if their understanding was still quite seriously distorted!)

Will we stone those who bring this message of the indwelling of God in human hearts? Will we be so taken by it that we will treat its bearers as gurus, perhaps even as themselves gods? We might think ourselves beyond both of these primitive reactions. More likely then, in us, would be to regard it as no big deal, as already within our comprehension, to treat it with an indifference born of familiarity.

We must trust that the word of the Father, spoken by Jesus, and echoed across the centuries by the Holy Spirit in the Church, will find ways to remind us of its presence, of its promise, of its call. It is a delicate process for it is a prompting of us and in us by God who is infinitely holy. How will we receive such an intimate and profound approach? At times we may want to spit it out and turn our backs. At times we may want to use it for any number of purposes of our own.

As we move towards Pentecost let us pray that we can remain open to the coming of the Spirit, keen to hear the word in its fulness, ready to enter more deeply into its depth of meaning, disposed to the radical changes the word promises. Be not afraid, says the Lord, knocking on our door, come with honourable intentions, that keeping his word we might remain in his love, that he with his Father and the Holy Spirit might dwell with us, and that we might have life, a fulness of life as yet unimagined.

Fear alerts us to what might be lost. Love teaches us that what might be lost is nothing compared with the gifts in store for us.

Easter Week 5 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Acts 6:1-7; Psalm 32 (33); 1 Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12

The image of many mansions (John 14:2) leads us into thinking of heaven as a physical place (which of course it must be in some sense if it is to accommodate our resurrected bodies). But Jesus is speaking in the first place about the dimensions of God’s love, which is not measured by any of our standards whether temporal or spatial, imaginative or conceptual. The love of the Father is extravagant and generous, a love that comes to find us and in which there is room for everyone. The only measure of it we are given is Jesus himself who is the way to it, the truth of it, and the life it brings.

This solemn ‘I AM the way, the truth and the life’ (John 14:6) is just the latest in a series of such statements that punctuate John’s gospel – I am the bread of life, the living bread, the light of the world, the resurrection and the life, the door, the good shepherd, the vine. We find examples in the other gospels too: ‘do not be afraid: it is I (literally, I am)’ (Mark 6:50). When Moses asked God his name God replied ‘I am who I am’ (Exodus 3:14). The ‘I am’ statements in the gospels have to do with this: clearly we are being taught that Jesus is entitled to the divine name, he is God present among us.

The same Moses who asked God’s name later asked to see God. In response he was told that he could not see God’s face and live, but that he would be allowed to see God’s back (Exodus 33:18, 21-23). ‘No one has ever seen God’, we are told in the prologue to John’s gospel, but ‘the only Son who is in the bosom of the Father has made him known’. In today’s gospel reading the apostle Philip asks to see the Father: Jesus tells him that to have seen him is to have seen the Father, for Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus (John 14:8-10).

So, in giving us a name for God and in showing us the face of God, Jesus is not only a greater one than Moses but is also God’s fullest response to the requests made by Moses. We are given a name where Moses was not: it is the name of Jesus. We are allowed to see God’s face where Moses was not: it is the face of Jesus, the only Son who reveals the glory of the Father. The law was given through Moses – that first instalment of truth, God’s word dwelling among his people as the standard by which they should live. Grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ – that final instalment of truth, God’s word pitching his tent among us. He is not only now the concrete standard or norm for all our living. He is also the love that makes it possible for us to live, as we ought and as we desire, in freedom and truth and love.

For God’s people escaping Egypt, Moses is the one to whom God reveals the way they should take. From the mountain of his encounter with God he brings the tablets of the truth by which they should live. He leads them to the threshold of the Promised Land and so to the life God had prepared for them. Now it is Jesus who is not only a messenger of these things but who is in his own Person the way, the truth and the life.

As God’s people were called from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land, so those who have come to believe have been called out of darkness into his wonderful light (1 Peter 2:4-9). The destination now is not a geographical one, not the earthly paradise of Galilee and the Jordan valley. The destination is simply the Father who is love and who has first loved us. It is strange to be told that believers will do even greater things than the Son because he has returned to the Father. Here is another reason why we need the Spirit, as Paul will explain (1 Corinthians 2:12), to help us understand the gift we have received, what it means to be living stones in that spiritual house, living mansions in the city of God.

Easter Week 4 Saturday

Readings: Acts 13:44-.52; Psalm 98; John 14:7-14

You can listen here to a homily for today

Easter Week 4 Friday

Readings: Acts 13:26-33; Psalm 2; John 14:1-6

When Benedict XVI took that name as Pope it drew attention to one of the forgotten popes of the 20th century, Giacomo Della Chiesa, who reigned as Benedict XV from September 1914 to January 1922. His reign was dominated by the First World War and its aftermath. He is remembered as a pope who gave his energy, along with his extensive diplomatic experience and skills, to encouraging reconciliation and rebuilding peace, across Europe especially, and between the Church and the state in many nations, not least in Italy itself.

Benedict XV's motto was the opening verse of Psalm 70 (71), In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. It is also the final verse of the Te Deum, the Church's great hymn of praise and thanksgiving, sung when wars and plagues end, sung at the turning of each year and to mark moments of special gratitude. That final verse reads In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternum' 'in you, O Lord, I hoped: let me not be forever lost'. It is a solemn prayer at the end of a great hymn, given greater solemnity and seriousness by the musical setting to which it is often sung. To be lost is bad enough. To be lost forever would be dreadful, dreadful beyond words.

Place alongside this prayer the famous declaration of Jesus in today's gospel reading: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life'. It addresses three ways in which people can be lost and reminds us that the Lord in whom we trust rescues us from each of them.

If I do not know where I am, or I do not know where I am going, then I am lost. As Thomas - yes, the doubter! - says in the reasonable question that elicited Jesus's declaration, 'we do not know where you are going - how can we know the way?' 'I am the way ...' Jesus is our present companion, our future destiny and our guide if we are to get from here to there. Because he is the way, staying with him means we cannot get lost on our journey.

If I am ignorant or in error about things that I ought to know and know correctly, or about things I ought to understand and accept, then I am, once again, lost. We often say it when we are trying to understand something difficult: 'I'm lost'. 'What is truth?' is a question on the lips of another doubter, Pontius Pilate, a question to which Jesus does not reply. Is it that he has already answered it in today's gospel passage, 'I am the truth'? Was Pilate supposed to know this? Jesus had just told him that his mission was to bear witness to the truth and Pilate, unwittingly, helps him to fulfil that mission. Because Jesus is the truth, staying with him means we cannot get lost in ignorance or error.

Our animal nature reacts most strongly to anything that would threaten its life. To lose its life is, for any living being, the ultimate way of being lost. To be lost here is to be dead, to cease to exist, to be forever lost since once an animal nature loses its life what can restore it? There are many levels on which we are alive - biological life, intellectual life, social life, spiritual life. Just as we live on all these levels we can also die on all these levels. Jesus has already taught the disciples that he has come that they would have life in all its fulness. All of these plus a level of life beyond anything we can imagine are held out to us by Jesus, who is the Author of Life, the firstborn of all creation, and the firstborn from the dead. Because Jesus is the life, staying with him means we cannot get lost in death, we cannot be lost forever.

'All the promises of God are fulfilled in the raising of Jesus from the dead': Paul preaches this in today's first reading. The prayer of Psalm 70 (71) is therefore answered. You will not be lost forever because the One who is risen from the dead is your way, your truth, and your life. 'My sheep listen to my voice', Jesus told us earlier this week, 'I know them and they follow me, I give them eternal life, they will never be lost'.

We will sometimes feel lost in the course of our life - about where we are, about what is true, about living life in its fulness - but to place our hope in Jesus Christ means we cannot be lost forever. We will travel safely on the way. We will live in the light of truth. We will enjoy the fulness of life.