18 May 2025 - 5th Sunday of Easter “C”
Acts 14:21...27; Rev 21:1-5; John 13:31...35
Homily
Jesus' last words to his disciples at the Last Supper have rightly been called his “spiritual testament”. Jesus does not give His disciples a final set of precepts or detailed recommendations about what they should or should not do. When He says: ‘A new commandment I give you, that you love one another’, the Greek word (entolè), which we translate into French as ‘commandment’ for want of a better term, has, in John's language, a doctrinal rather than a moral or legal meaning. In this context, it is much more a question of a ‘mission’ than a commandment. The word ‘mission’ implies that we are sent by someone to achieve something (unfortunately this word ‘mission’, so rich in meaning, tends nowadays to lose its richness, being frequently used to express the goal that a group gives itself). Loving one another is the mission we have received from Jesus. And this is how people will know we are His disciples; this is how we will be His witnesses.
Jesus also said: ‘If you love me, you will listen to my word... you will keep my commandment, my father will love you; we will come and make our home with you’. The loving heart, or rather the loving community, now replaces the Temple of Jerusalem which, in the Old Covenant, was God's dwelling place. And we find this message clearly expressed once again in the great final piece of the Book of Revelation: The new Jerusalem has no Temple in it; for the Lamb is its Temple. And her dwelling place is the loving community.
Unlike the people of the Old Covenant, who were closed in on themselves, the Christian community is, by its very nature and mission, open and universal. In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we read the conclusion of the account of Paul's first missionary journey to Lycaonia, Pisidia and Pamphylia, and the description of his return to Antioch. In this last part of his journey, the Apostle Paul was primarily concerned with consolidating the newly-formed communities, strengthening them against persecution and giving them appropriate leadership and hierarchy.
In each community, Paul established a group of elders, which was in line with Jewish tradition. Indeed, all the Jewish communities in the diaspora had such a group. However, Paul and Barnabas introduced an important change: it was not the community itself that appointed its Elders; they were appointed by the founding Apostle. To see this as the beginning of authoritarianism in the Church would be to misinterpret the situation and transpose modern attitudes and concerns into the distant past. For Paul, this is an essential dimension of mission, collegiality, underlining the relationship between local communities and the universal Church. For Paul, it is a way of giving a universal perspective to each local community, through the interdependence between all the Churches. The Jewish ghettos of the diaspora were very isolated from each other. The Christian ‘system’ would be completely different.
Whereas the Jewish communities waited in isolation and inwardly for the restoration of the great Assembly of the people, the Christian Churches saw themselves from the outset as being that great Assembly. Because of this, they were ready to accept the leadership of an Apostle who was also responsible for other Churches. This reminds us that, although it is legitimate and even necessary for each local Church and each local Community to develop its own identity and its own face, it is just as important, and even essential, to accept all the beauty and consequences of belonging to a wider Community, and to take part in the great symphony of the Church, rather than giving its private recital with a single instrument.
This is one aspect of the mission given to us by Jesus to love one another.
Armand Veilleux