Keeping His Word

Sixth Sunday of Easter 01 May 2016  

First reading
Acts 15:1-2,22-29

Some men came down from Judaea and taught the brothers, ‘Unless you have yourselves circumcised in the tradition of Moses you cannot be saved.’ This led to disagreement, and after Paul and Barnabas had had a long argument with these men it was arranged that Paul and Barnabas and others of the church should go up to Jerusalem and discuss the problem with the apostles and elders.

  Then the apostles and elders decided to choose delegates to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas; the whole church concurred with this. They chose Judas known as Barsabbas and Silas, both leading men in the brotherhood, and gave them this letter to take with them:

  ‘The apostles and elders, your brothers, send greetings to the brothers of pagan birth in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia. We hear that some of our members have disturbed you with their demands and have unsettled your minds. They acted without any authority from us; and so we have decided unanimously to elect delegates and to send them to you with Barnabas and Paul, men we highly respect who have dedicated their lives to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 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.’

 

Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 66:2-3,5-6,8

Second reading
Apocalypse 21:10-14,22-23

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. The walls of it were of a great height, and had twelve gates; at each of the twelve gates there was an angel, and over the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel; on the east there were three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. The city walls stood on twelve foundation stones, each one of which bore the name of one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

  I saw that there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple, and the city did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it.

 

Gospel	John 14:23-29

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘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 words.

And my word is not my own:

it is the word of the one who sent me.

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.

Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you,

a peace the world cannot give,

this is my gift to you.

Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.

You heard me say: I am going away, and shall return.

If you loved me you would have been glad to know that I am going to the Father,

for the Father is greater than I.

I have told you this now before it happens,

so that when it does happen you may believe.’

  Reflection
By Benj Santiago
 

“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling.with him.”

In about two Sundays it will be Pentecost Sunday. The disciples are being assured by Jesus that He will never leave them alone. In today's Gospel, He assured His disciples and all of us in the present time that He and His Father will dwell with us with one condition: Love Him! How? By keeping His word, we show our love for Him. And how do we keep His word? LOVE!

Love is the most abused word, and the most defined word. Jesus said "If you love me you will keep my word". I often hear priests and preachers say that the summary of all the words in the bible is LOVE. Jesus in Last Sunday's Gospel put up a New Commandment and that is "To love one another as I have loved you".  Keeping His words, to me, is simply loving God and everyone even if the person you need to love does not love you back. Even if the person has a different opinion, creed, color, or belief.

His words are eternal and it has been written in the Bible. Let us open the Bible, read it, contemplate on it and discern what it tells us to do and keep it in our hearts.

I note that we also remember the feast of St Joseph the Worker today. St Joseph loved God that he willingly obeyed God's will for him to be the foster father of Jesus, God's only Son. Let's ask St Joseph's help to stay in love with God so that God could also work in and through us.

  Prayer  

Our loving and merciful Father, we thank You for giving us Your Son Jesus Christ our risen Lord and Savior. May we continually hunger for His words. May our hearts continue to burn with love for one another as Jesus has loved us. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.