Sixth Sunday of Easter – April 27, 2008

Scripture Readings
First Acts 8:5-8, 14-17
Second 1 Peter 3:15-18
Gospel John 14:15-21

Prepared by: Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P.

1. Subject Matter
• The sending of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate
• The reason for our hope
• Christ’s promise to love us and to reveal himself to us

2. Exegetical Notes
• “Two of the Twelve are sent from the mother church in Jerusalem to incorporate the
Samaritan community into the great body….The gift of the Spirit comes through the Church,
represented by the college of the Twelve in Jerusalem” (JBC).
• “the hope that is in you” – “Not just a conviction about future expectations, but the every
essence of the motivation of the new people of God. It is there imperishable and undefiled
inheritance” (J. Fitzmyer).
• “You will keep my commandments” – “Obedience is the proof of love, which in turn makes
possible the communion between God and man” (Bruce Vawter).

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• 425: The transmission of the Christian faith consists primarily in proclaiming Jesus Christ in
order to lead others to faith in him. From the beginning, the first disciples burned with the
desire to proclaim Christ.

• 1288: "From that time on the apostles, in fulfillment of Christ's will, imparted to the newly
baptized by the laying on of hands the gift of the Spirit that completes the grace of Baptism.
For this reason in the Letter to the Hebrews the doctrine concerning Baptism and the laying
on of hands is listed among the first elements of Christian instruction. The imposition of
hands is rightly recognized by the Catholic tradition as the origin of the sacrament of
 Confirmation, which in a certain way perpetuates the grace of Pentecost in the Church." (see
also 1315)

• 348: To keep the commandments is to correspond to the wisdom and the will of God as
expressed in his work of creation.

• 2074: When we believe in Jesus Christ, partake of his mysteries, and keep his
commandments, the Savior himself comes to love, in us, his Father and his brethren, our
Father and our brethren. His person becomes, through the Spirit, the living and interior rule of
our activity.

• 787: From the beginning, Jesus associated his disciples with his own life, revealed the
mystery of the Kingdom to them, and gave them a share in his mission, joy, and sufferings.
Jesus spoke of a still more intimate communion between him and those who would follow
him: "Abide in me, and I in you. . . . I am the vine, you are the branches." And he proclaimed
a mysterious and real communion between his own body and ours: "He who eats my flesh
and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him."

• 51: "It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the
mystery of his will. His will was that men should have access to the Father, through Christ,
the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature."

4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities

• St. Augustine: “If an unbeliever asks me a reason for my faith and hope, and I perceive that
he cannot accept it unless he believes, I give him that very reason, so that he may see how
absurd it is for him to ask a reason for things which he cannot grasp until he believes.”
• Andreas: “Sanctifying the Lord does not mean that there is any addition to his existing
holiness. Rather we are called to sanctify him in our hearts. By doing this we have a better
understanding of what his holiness is and something of it is implanted in our hearts.”
• St. Bede: “What does is mean to sanctify God in your heart if not to love that holiness of his
which is beyond understanding, in the innermost depths of your heart?
• Andreas: “We suffer for the specific purpose of being trained for what we are meant to be
according to the mercy of God.”
• Oecumenius: “There are two benefits to be gained from unjust suffering. First, the righteous
person who suffers grows in righteousness as a result of his patience. Second, the sinner
who is spared is this way may be converted by seeing someone else suffer on his behalf.”
• St. John Chrysostom: “If you ask why the Spirit did not come immediately after the
resurrection, this was in order to increase their gratitude for receiving him by increasing their
desire. They were troubled by nothing as long as Christ was with them, but when his
departure had left them desolate and very much afraid, they would be most eager tot receive
the Spirit.”
• St. Basil the Great: “If we are illumined by divine power and fix our eyes on the beauty of the
image of the invisible God, and if we through the image are led up to the indescribable
beauty of its source, it is because we have been inseparably joined to the spirit of knowledge.
 He gives those who love the vision of truth the power that enables them to see the image.
And this power is himself.”
• St. Augustine: “Whoever loves already has the Holy Spirit, and by having him he becomes
worthy of having even more of him. And the more he has the Spirit the more he loves.”
• Fr. Julian Carron: “The Spirit does not come to bring us something different from what
Christ brought us, but to make Christ ours, profoundly ours, to make possible for everything
we hear, all we have encountered, to become more and more our own.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with
the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice
that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a
saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter
with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by
Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in
Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled,
and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a
slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled;
as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an
Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists
advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came
to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she
used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had
known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave.
Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that
this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he
had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the
supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants.
She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself
accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father's right
hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would
be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am
awaited by this Love. And so my life is good. Spe Salvi #3

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• “…proclaimed Christ to them” – “The Church’s real contribution to liberation, which she can
never postpone and which is most urgent today, is to proclaim truth in the world, to affirm that
God is, that God knows us, and that God is as Jesus Christ has revealed him, and that, in
Jesus Christ, he has given us the path of life. Only then can there be such a thing as
conscience, man’s receptivity for truth, which gives each person direct access to God and
makes him greater than every imaginable world system.”
• “A reason for your hope” – “As soon as we ask what man’s hope should rightly be, we cannot
look solely to man himself for the answer, since man represents a danger as well as a hope
 to himself…Faith in the Resurrection of Jesus says that there is a future for every human
being; the cry for unending life which is a part of the person is indeed answered. Through
Jesus we do know ‘the room where exiled love lays down its victory.’ He himself is this place,
and he calls us to be with him and in dependence on him. He calls us to keep this place open
within the world so that he, the exiled love, may reappear over and over in the world.”
• “The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot accept:” “What is this “Holy Spirit” of which it
speaks?…World history is a struggle between two kinds of love: self-love to the point of
hatred for God, and love of God to the point of self-renunciation. This second love brings the
redemption of the world and the self.”
• “In the Ten Commandments God presents himself, depicts himself, and at the same time
interprets human existence, so that its truth is made manifest, as it becomes visible in the
mirror of God’s nature, because man can only rightly be understood from the viewpoint of
God. Living out the Ten Commandments means living out our own resemblance to God,
responding to the truth of our nature, and thus doing good. To say it again, another way:
Living out the Ten Commandments means living out the divinity of man, and exactly that is
freedom: the fusing of our being with the Divine Being and the resulting harmony of all with
all.”

7. Other Considerations
• Philip proclaims, not a message, but “the Christ to them.” “There was great joy in the that
city,” because true joy is always linked to knowing a person who is a key to our ultimate
happiness, our destiny. Philip gives them that encounter. When Peter then directs us to
“sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts,” he does so to ensure that we will never grow forgetful
of that saving encounter—that we will live from the memory of an Event that makes each
moment new the more we live in sensitive attention to it. Jesus promises, “I am in you. I will
not leave you orphans. I will reveal myself to you.” The sign that we have been seized by the
love of the person of Christ is the fact that we can keep his commandments—promptly,
joyfully, and with facility.

Recommended Resources

Benedict XVI, Pope. Benedictus. Yonkers: Magnificat, 2006.

Biblia Clerus: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_eng.html

Cameron, Peter John. To Praise, To Bless, To Preach—Cycle A. Huntington: Our Sunday

Visitor, 2001.

Hahn, Scott:
http://www.salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/churchandbible/homilyhelps/homilyhelps.cfm.

Martin, Francis: http://www.hasnehmedia.com/homilies.shtml