Sunday the 18th of May 2025 - The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 14:21b-27/ Ps 145(144)/ Revelation 21:1-5a/ John 13:31-33a, 34-35

This week it has really felt that spring is here, the sun has been out, the trees and plants are budding and flowering. There is the air of new beginnings as we look forward to the summer. Spring is the season of renewal, after the dark days of winter there is a promise in the air, a promise of regeneration, of hope in things to come. After the winter spring seems to come from nowhere banishing the harshness of winter and ushering in a new season of warmth and growth.

The celebration of Easter does much the same for our faith lives. After the darkness of the passion and cross life springs back from the tomb as Jesus emerges triumphant over sin and death. Our faith is given a much-needed boost in the Easter season. This year there is another cause for renewal in the Church and our faith. The election of a new Pope always generates new interest in the church and its message of the gospel. Yes, we mourn the passing of Pope Francis, but we celebrate and gives thanks for the successor to St Peter in the person of Pope Leo. I find the international interest in the election of a new Pope extraordinary. All the major press agencies gave massive coverage to events in Rome as they speculated endlessly before the result and then tried to guess how Pope Leo will lead the church after he had been elected.

That interest will die down but there will doubtlessly be people around the world who will have had their interest ignited and will be drawn closer to Jesus and his church. The important thing is that there is continuity from the first days when Peter was appointed personally by Jesus right up until today. Down the years the Popes have not always been the best of examples of church leaders but that is because we are fallen creatures who often tend to do the wrong thing. The important thing is that the Holy Spirit works despite our weaknesses rather than being obstructed by them.

The men chosen by Jesus as his apostles were very human with their own faults and failings. The short Gospel passage for today continues recounting the farewell speech that Jesus gave at the last supper. Jesus had washed the feet of the apostles in a display of service that would have been considered beneath him, even demeaning. Jesus was setting an example of loving service for them and for us to follow. Amongst the Apostles there was Peter who would deny Christ three times in his darkest hours, Thomas, who would refuse to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead until he saw for himself, James and John, the brothers with a tempestuous and ambitious nature, and Judas who was about to betray Jesus leading to his suffering and death. None of the carefully selected apostles were free from human failings but Jesus chose them for his work and loved them without condition as demonstrated by the washing of their feet. We are all loved unconditionally by God and there is nothing we can do that will reduce the desire he has to show us that love.

Jesus then gave his followers a new commandment, ‘to love one another: just as I have loved you’. This is how Christians should be recognised, that we love one another as Jesus has loved us. Not a flowery romantic love but a deep sacrificial love, a love that does not count the cost, does not seek repayment, that is completely unconditional and can lead to hardship, rejection, suffering, and even death, a love we see when we ponder the image of Christ on the cross. There has always been the commandment to love God and love our neighbour, what is new about this commandment of Jesus is that he is calling us to the deepest love possible, the love he showed us by laying down his life for us. It is by demonstrating this sacrificial love that Christians should be recognised in a world consumed with self-interest and a false image of what real love is.

In the second reading we hear how Paul and Barnabas travelled through the gentile world passing on the faith and appointing elders to run things after they moved on. This continues in the church today as Bishops are appointed to lead the various Catholic dioceses around the word. Leading us as we seek to pass on our faith. We are called Christians as the first followers of Christ were known all those years ago in Antioch.

John’s vision recorded in the reading from Revelation is the promise of things to come but that is already beginning in our world. God does indeed dwell with us already in the Eucharist. Our God is not some far off unapproachable entity. In Jesus we have a God who is very close to us. He lived, suffered and died as one of us and has risen leading the way for us to do the same. In Holy Communion, the Eucharist, this same God remains with us in a very close, intimate way. What we eat becomes part of us, in consuming the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus in Communion we become closer to God than possible in any other way in this life. Through Holy Communion we can start to become Christlike in readiness for what we are to become in eternal life.

We welcome the renewal and freshness that Easter promises us. This renewal is present in our readings today, Paul and Barnabas report enthusiastically the admission of Gentiles into the fast-growing church. The visions of Revelation give us the image of the marriage feast of Christ and his church with creation being renewed, and the Gospel passage gives us a new way to follow Christ by loving each other as he loves us.

Does the world recognise us as Christians by the way we love? With the renewal of the Easter season and the appointment of a new Pope we can be refreshed in our faith and live up to the new commandment to love one another as Jesus loves us.

God Bless Brendan