Homily for Thursday of the 5th Week of Easter Year A
Theme: The Faithful Christian
By: Fr. Benny Tuazon
Homily for Thursday May 14 2020
(Jn. 15:9-11) Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter, Feast of St. Matthias
In today’s Gospel Jesus reveals the importance of remaining in His love. He was a witness to this with respect to His relationship with His Father. Throughout His life and ministry, in spite of every temptation and obstacle thrown at Him, He remained connected and faithful to His Father. He experienced great joy and fulfillment in the end.
The challenge is more to remain in Jesus’s love. It means being faithful to Him every time. It entails following His commandments. Faithfulness does not only happen in church or only on Sundays. Faithfulness is a way of life. It is expected from every baptized Christian. The state we obtained after baptism must be maintained. That is part of remaining in Jesus’ love. And as Jesus Has said, it will make our joy complete.
Remember that we came from God. Thus we were holy from the beginning. Concupiscence, as portrayed in the sinning of Adam and Eve, entered in humanity because of disobedience. Holiness was rejected. Evil was embraced. Yet, we did not lose our sense of holiness. The Sacrament of Reconciliation was instituted by Jesus to bring us back to His told. Hopefully, the forgiven has learned his lesson and become regularly faithful.
Evil is cunning. Just like with Adam and Eve, it will exert every effort to lure us away from being faithful. But we have the freedom and capacity to reject temptation. Discernment will help us undress temptation. We seek the assistance of the Holy Spirit so that we can determine the Good from the bad, the moral and the immoral, the devil and the Lord.
Reason alone will not be sufficient. Faith is.