REMAINING IN THE JOY OF RESURRECTION

SUNDAY, SIXTH WEEK OF EASTER

Act 15:1-2,22-29; Ps 67:2-3,5-6,8; Rev 21:10-14,22-23; Jn 14:23-29

Paying Attention to the Resurrection

The resurrection of the Son of Man launched our participation in the life of God. What the Incarnation of the Eternal Word started was opened to the general human race at the resurrection. Because God sacrificed the Lamb for us, God has taken away our sins, which was the hindrance to our participation in the life of the Trinity. Subsequently, we see men become the dwelling place of God through the Holy Spirit. The work of salvation of the human race was accomplished solely by God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Our point of entrance into the communion of the Trinity is the Son of Man. Faith in his life, death, and resurrection brings each person into the membership of his body. His humanity is our way to this communion. Hence, those closest to him during his ministry in the flesh whom he appointed as his apostles have the primacy of place. We see the role of this primacy in resolving the first conflict on the doctrine and practice of the early Church. The question was about the completeness of the salvation wrought by God through the Son of Man for all people. The Jewish believer who played down the importance of the Messiah confused the Law of Moses and the practice of circumcision as an essential part of human salvation. But the Holy Spirit guided the apostles, who were familiar with the life and words of Jesus Christ, to resolve the doctrinal problem.

The letter of the Fathers of the first Council of the Church held in Jerusalem shows the fundamental role of hierarchy and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church. “Accordingly, we are sending you Judas and Silas, who will confirm by word of mouth what we have written in this letter. It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves not to saddle you with any burden beyond these essentials: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols; from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from fornication. Avoid these, and you will do what is right. Farewell.” As we explained in the previous reflections, the prescriptions were to enhance the Christians’ awareness of their consecration to Jesus Christ and their communion with and in the Holy Spirit. Our consecration to Jesus and the Trinity is through faith and obedience to the word of God. “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him. Those who do not love me do not keep my word. And my word is not my own: it is the word of the one who sent me.” Greater attention to the word of God increases the love of God, the Holy Spirit, in us, for attention to the word of God means an increase in our attention and presence before God. The Christian prayer means precisely this.

Our Lord’s word also reveals the presence and activities of the Holy Spirit individually and collectively in the Church as the hallmark of His Church. “I have said these things to you while still with you; but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.” The need for us to get used to the word of God in a personal life of prayer has been a constant theme in our reflection. There is no surer way of experiencing the renewal of the Holy Spirit than familiarity with the word of God and his Eucharistic presence. The word of God leads us to a personal relationship with the Son of Man, to whom the scriptures point. God transforms our minds and hearts into that of Jesus Christ through his word. The transformation is what our sanctification implies.

The letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus Christ, by the single sacrifice of his body, has made perfect all that he is now sanctifying. The sanctification is through our rapprochement with his word and the Holy Spirit. God showed John, the beloved apostle, what the new Jerusalem would look like when God brings the saints to perfection. “In the spirit, the angel took me to the top of an enormous high mountain and showed me Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down from God out of heaven. It had all the radiant glory of God and glittered like some precious jewel of crystal-clear diamond.” What is required from us for the work of sanctification to be successful is conformity or docility to the activities of the Holy Spirit in and around us daily. Through the sanctification that God effects through his word and the Holy Spirit in us, he constitutes us, personally and collectively, into a Temple fit for his glory. We dwell in him as he dwells in us. “I saw that there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple.” Through the mind and heart of Jesus Christ and communion with the Holy Spirit, we worship God daily in our hearts, in the Church.        

Let us pray: Grant, almighty God, that we may celebrate with heartfelt devotion these days of joy, which we keep in honour of the risen Lord, and that what we relive in remembrance we may always hold to in what we do. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.