7TH SUNDAY HOMILY OF THE EASTERTIDE (WORLD COMMUNICATION DAY — YEAR A
HOMILY THEME: PRAYER AS AN ACT OF LOVE THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY IN THE CHURCH
BY: Fr. Celestine Muonwe
Act 1: 12 – 14, 1 Pet 4: 13 – 16, Jn 17: 1 – 11
In the first reading, we see the apostles alongside the mother of Jesus and other disciples waiting in Jerusalem for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The apostles had just witnessed the mystery of the Ascension of the Lord at the mountain of Oliveth. The most interesting point here is that they waited for the promise of the Father as Jesus instructed them, in prayer. The Church by definition from its Greek root, ecclesia implies an assembly of believers.
From the Old testament root, Qahal, it means a compulsory assembly of the people of God, that is, Isreal. It was not an optional get-together, because it was in this assembly that Isreal encounters God, not individually, but as a covenant community. Likewise, the public or community worship of God’s people of the new covenant is not optional for Christians, because in this assembly, God is present.
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Prayers, when said in a community has more powerful effects than when privately said. The Mass for instance, is the highest form of worship, in which the body of Christ, the Church, offers in union with her Lord, the sacrifice of His own Body and Blood to the Father. The community that prays together stay together, just as the family that prays together stay together.
In the second reading, St. Peter reminds us that suffering is part and parcel of the Christian experience. When any member of the Church suffers, the entire Church suffers, the Body of Christ suffers. Christians should find joy in any hardship endured for the glory of God, for the sake of Jesus, and the Gospel.
In fact, such hardship is a gift from God, hence, a blessing of God, because it is a sign that the one who endures them has in him, the Spirit of glory, the Spirit of the living God. Hence, whenever we face suffering, not on account of our lives of indiscipline or lawlessness, but for the sake of the Gospel of Christ, we should take to prayer, we should come closer to God in worship and thanksgiving for finding us worthy to share in His cross, and hence, glorify His holy name.
In the Gospel, we see the high priestly prayer of Jesus to His Father for His young Church and for our salvation. The setting is that Jesus has just finished the last supper with His disciples, in which He gave them the commandment of love that should guide the community of faith He was leaving behind. He still felt the need to pray openly for them to the Father, realising that their success depends largely on the grace and mercy of God.
That is to say that their capacity to bear fruits, and realise the goals of the apostolate He was bequeathing to them is dependent on God, who is the owner of the vineyard. The prayer of Jesus therefore teaches us that in spite of our good intentions, and much learning and knowledge of what we think should be done, we must not lose sight of the fact that God alone brings our efforts and good wills to fruition in the service of Him.
By this prayer too, Jesus demonstrates His deep love for the apostles, and His commitment to guard and protect them as the good shepherd who loves and cares for his sheep. The act of prayer is an act of love, Jesus asks His disciples to love their enemies and pray those that persecute them. When we pray, we glorify God and show our love for others as Jesus has asked us: “A new commandment I give you, love one another even as I have loved you,” (Jn. 15:12).
This priestly prayer of Jesus is another call for us to show our love for others by constantly praying for them, especially those whom God has put into our charge here on earth, our family members, our Church members who are sick or no longer worship with us, our parishioners, our relatives and friends, and our enemies as well. We should never fail to pray for them all.
The High Priestly Prayer of Jesus
Jesus started this lengthy prayer to pouring out His soul to God, and declaring the depth of His love for His Father, His disciples and ourselves, who through them would come to believe in Him. Jesus started by calling God, Father. There are some similarities between this prayer and the Lord’s prayer, which calls God, our Father.
The greatest revelation of the Father by Jesus is the fatherhood of God, that is, through Jesus, we have come to know God as our Father. As a Father, God provides for us, nourishes us, cares for us, attends to our needs, and protects us. Jesus as the Son of the Father shares the same divine nature as the Father, but we share instead in the sonship of Christ, that is, a participated sonship, an adoptive sonship.
Jesus prays that the hour for His glorification through the cross has come, the hour of temptation, the hour of the cross. Jesus makes light of this moment of His life, which lasted for at least 12 hours from the moment of His arrest to the crucifixion, and called it the hour, in order to show us the temporality of our pains and sufferings in life, that would eventually fetch us everlasting happiness in heaven when lived on with Christ.
Hence, each one of us, must get an hour on earth, it is this hour that St. Peter tells us that when it comes, should see us glorifying God for it, because whenever we suffer for God’s sake we give Him glory, and we are enriched with great blessings and joy from God.
Jesus further asks the Father to glorify Him, so that He may also glorify the Father in return, since the Father has given Him power over all human beings. In this prayer Jesus asks the Father to grant Him the glory of the cross, the grace of suffering for our sake in obedience to the will of the Father, the gift of suffering and dying in order to satisfy the anger of God, and reconcile us to God. Just like Jesus, do we see our crosses borne on account of the Gospel as gifts and blessings of God?
Jesus glorified the Father all through His life, and would glorify the Father once again on His cross, death, resurrection, ascension and through the Church today in the power of the Holy Spirit. This would not have been possible without the Cross. Jesus has accomplished the work given to Him by the Father and has glorified the Father in His miracles, in His teachings, as a little child preaching in the temple of Jerusalem in His Father’s house; He drove out the money changers bags from the temple and warned them against turning His Father’s house into a den of robbers.
Jesus notes that it is the Father’s turn to glorify Him, with the same glory they had together before the world was made. In other words, Jesus alludes to His divinity within this context: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.”
Jesus has manifested the Father’s name to those whom the Father has given Him out of the world. Jesus revealed to us the name of God as Father, unlike the understanding in Judaism where God’s name is not to be pronounced (YHWH). Jesus further alludes to His divinity and to the fact that it is the Father that gave Him the disciples and those who believed in Him.
In our works of ministry in the Lord’s vineyard, any fruits we are able to witness are all immense graces and gifts of God for us, and nothing for us to claim responsibility. Just like Jesus, we must bear this in mind, and live our lives only in the service of God, and His eternal glory.
Jesus appears to excuse His disciples’ weaknesses by saying they have kept the word of God, even though He knew that some of them would still deny Him. Jesus prays for them and not for the world that is mired in sin, for whose sake He came to die. Not that He does not care for the world, Jesus however, wanted to concentrate His attention on the eleven through whom He would accomplish the mission of spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
Jesus declares that He is glorified in the apostles, and so also in us His later followers. The question is: How much or how well is the Lord glorified in my own life? How do I manifest His glory in my life, in the love and service of Him, in my places of work, in my prayer life and closeness to God?
Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, You are the source of all glory and power, grant that our daily lives may be resounding hymns of glory to your infinite majesty, just as Your life on earth was a great melody of eternal glory to the Father, Amen.
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