Sixth Sunday of Easter---Liturgical Cycle C

Lectionary Readings

Homily
Once I got a call from a Southern Baptist Seminarian. He was asking for an appointment at St. Joe’s about assisting him in a school project. He had prepared a questionnaire regarding prayer in ministry. It asked questions such as:


What is prayer?
What do you pray about?
What are ways in which one could see prayer abused in ministry?
What are ways prayer is appropriately used in ministry? etc.

The last question asked,

Do you have any other helpful suggestions on the subject of prayer?

I had dashed off some ideas but was surprised at my answer to the last question. I wrote:

“One of the greatest requirements, it seems to me, for personal holiness (personal wholeness) at the core of one’s being which is so necessary for prayer, is a good and active sense of humor—not taking oneself, or people or events, too seriously. The Lord will provide!”

Reflecting on the scriptures today, I suspect that the church has put them together with tongue in cheek. By themselves they could be read quite seriously, but when you put them side by side, I can’t help but see the Spirit dancing with joy!

The first reading is so like us—all tangled up in our own importance:

It is the decision of the Holy Spirit (and ours too) not to lay any burden beyond that which is strictly necessary…to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meat of strangled animals…

...Now isn’t that something?!

Now, look at the freedom of the second reading from the Book of Revelation. The beautiful vision of the City of God coming down from heaven. The Semitic “City” as a place of haven, a mother enfolding the traveler in its protecting arms. It sparkles like a diamond—its gates are open on all sides to receive the weary traveler into its bosom. God himself is the temple who embraces us on the way.

Or how about that last sentence in the first reading: “You will be advised to avoid these things. Farewell.

Compare that with the farewell of the Gospel where Jesus says, “Peace is my farewell to you.”

And we know that his “peace” is the doing of the Words, his way of life. Not the words of people, of authority, of big shots. Their precepts are of human origin, not divine.

In all of this a good sense of humor seems a necessity. We have to laugh at our carryings on—necessary as they might be. The church in placing these readings side-by-side is giving us a good look at ourselves. Good order and discipline is necessary for any society of human beings and are necessary for the church’s life here on earth. But we should never canonize these rules and regulations as a matter of divine life or divine death. Such discipline seeks to help us along the way and when that function is antiquated that regulation must be discarded.

A good sense of humor, that light and free spirit of God, is indeed so necessary for our prayer, our conscious awareness of God’s presence. We must not take ourselves too seriously. God will provide.

So on this Sunday which begins to build a bridge between the Resurrection and the Ascension, and Pentecost, we must remember that the Spirit, light and free and dancing, is alive and well and growing among us right here, right now.

--Fr. Pat

Excerpt from "A Catholic's Companion: Liturgical Cycle C" (c)2000 C. Patrick Creed
Published by Watchmaker Press. Maggie Hettinger, editor