First Reading - Acts
15:1-2,22-29 ©
Responsorial Psalm – Psalm
66(67):2-3,5-6,8 ©
Second Reading – Apocalypse
21:10-14,22-23 ©
Alternative Second Reading
– Apocalypse 22:12-14,16-17,20 ©
Gospel Acclamation – John
14:23
The Gospel According to John
14:23-29 ©
Alternative Acclamation –
John 14:18
Alternative Gospel Reading
– John 17:20-26 ©
(NJB)
Listen!
Salvation is not earned.
It is a gift. It is the fulfillment of God’s
intention for you and the whole of creation.
Salvation is not linked to our rites and
rituals, to the way we mark ourselves as belonging to a group or not, to whether
we are in the Church or out.
Our ultimate salvation has nothing to do with
the things we eat, with our good deeds or our bad ones.
Our Salvation comes from God. We are saved
together, and until we have arrived at its fullness and completion, we are not
saved at all.
Be mindful.
The psalmist is right to ask God to bless all
peoples and all nations; to have pity and to be merciful.
The psalmist is right to ask for the
fulfillment of God’s promise.
Know this:
God is not confined to one place, neither is
God confined to one time, nor does God belong to one people.
God, who created the universe, God is the God
of everyone, whether they know of God or not. God is still God.
Praise the fairness of God. Ask for God’s
blessing; not just four yourself, but ask for it on behalf of everyone.
When we visualize the fulfilment of God’s
promise, when we reflect on the heavenly worlds and the paradise to come, bear
this in mind:
Let all the talk of precious metals, and
precious stones fall away; forget the talk of gold, and gems.
Ignore the jingoism, the fetish with Israel
and with Jerusalem, with the apostles of Jesus, they are not relevant to these
reflections. Every reference we find in scripture to these material things, is in
a real way a distraction from the central message of the gospels and the good
news they are meant to convey.
Where God is there is God, God who created the
universe and sustains all things in it. God who is the parent of every being;
where God is there is no temple, there is no altar, there is no edifice or
anything we would recognize as the structure of a church; there is no cathedral,
there is no basilica…where God is there is light, and love and peace.
The light has no limit, the light shines
forever and there is no darkness in it; in God’s embrace all people are welcome,
and no one will come to it who has not been prepared for it.
God prepares us all.
Where God dwells there are no gates. People
will come having passed through every plane, they will come from all directions.
Listen!
The promise of the revelation is this:
Every person will receive what they deserve…as
the children of God they will receive God’s love, they will be forgiven just as
Jesus prayed when he was dying on the cross. We will all receive mercy.
We will be cleansed and made well, healed and
made happy.
We will be whole.
The hungry will be fed, and the thirsty will
drink, the gift is free, and that is the promise of God.
Understand
this:
God, the creator of the universe, God is
present in all of God’s children, and where God is present God is present
fully.
There is no division in the divine. The divine
is inclusive of all reality, of every living being that is it.
No-one is excluded.
Every person who ever was, who is, who will
ever be, everyone is present in the divine, as such they are present within
each of us, for each of us carries the divine within ourselves.
Jesus was the son of God, as each of us is a
child of God; a son or daughter.
Love one another, as God loves you. This is
the great commandment.
Do not be afraid, life on Earth is merely a
passage to another world, it is the unfolding a mystery.
Listen to your sister, to your brother, they
have something important to say. Each one of us has the potential to speak for
God, to be God’s prophet, to be the advocate of Christ,
Everything, and everyone, returns to the
creator, in so doing we come to the understanding that we never apart.
God, the creator of the universe, God will
abandon no-one. God will leave no orphans, no-one will be left stranded in the
throws of sin.
Not one of us shall be lost.
Listen!
There
are passages in scripture, and there are many of them, in which the Gospels
provide the reader, or the listener, with only a tangled and confused set of
words and concepts that do little to shed light on anything good or meaningful.
The
Gospel for today is one of those passages.
It
is nearly impossible to get an accurate bead on its meaning.
Set
aside for a moment that John’s Gospel, has the least concern for historical
accuracy of the four. The Gospel was written more than one hundred years after
his death. It is likely that the event portrayed here never happened, that
Jesus never spoke these words in this way.
He
may have said something like it, but that is neither here nor there.
What
this meandering passage represents is the thoughts and feelings of John’s
community at the end of the first century CE. It fully represents the mystical
and mysterious way in which Christians had come to see the life of Jesus, and
Jesus’s relationship to God, the creator of the Universe. It does this in terms
that have a connection to some of the prevailing philosophical beliefs
regarding the metaphysical structure of reality, but does nothing to explicate
the system of beliefs it is specifically engaging.
It
is poor theology.
This
type of thinking has been a burden on the faith over the centuries and
millennia, and should be struck from the cannon. It is impossible for us to
know what the Gospel writers meant, what the limits of their thinking was,
never mind the fact that the philosophies of the ancient world, their
metaphysical systems, were false, they were wrong, they were errant, there is
little in those thought systems that can help us understand ourselves, the
world we live in, or our relationship to the divine.
What
truth we can glean from today’s passage is this:
Jesus
prayed to God on behalf of his followers, he prayed that they would understand
both his mission and the mission that he was passing on to them.
He
prayed for their unity.
He
prayed that they love one another, and that the message they carried forward in
his name was one of love.
This
Gospel passage has the appearance of being directed specifically to Christians,
and that is unfortunate because the mission of Jesus crosses all boundaries;
sectarian, national, ethnic and gender.
This
Gospel passage is overly concerned with the message regarding the identity of
Jesus, it is dogmatic, it pushes the message of who John’s community believed
Jesus was, over the mission to preach the love of God. That was not what Jesus
himself taught. In this way the Gospel deviates from the faith.
Who
Jesus was in the world, and what we believe about that is not germane. Such
beliefs have no bearing on the way
that is meant to be the Christian life.
As
followers of the way, rather than
concerning ourselves with who we believe Jesus was, we need to concern
ourselves with how Jesus was in the world, with how we are able to live a
loving life according to the standard Jesus set.
First Reading - Acts
15:1-2,22-29 ©
It Has Been Decided by
the Spirit and by Ourselves Not to Burden You with Any Burden Beyond these Essentials
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(67):2-3,5-6,8 ©
Let the peoples praise
you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.
Alleluia!
O
God, be gracious and bless us
and let your face shed its light upon us.
So
will your ways be known upon earth
and all nations learn your saving help.
Let the peoples praise
you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.
Let
the nations be glad and exult
for you rule the world with justice.
With
fairness you rule the peoples,
you guide the nations on earth.
Let the peoples praise
you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.
Let
the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you.
May
God still give us his blessing
till the ends of the earth revere him.
Let the peoples praise
you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.
Alleluia!
Second Reading – Apocalypse
21:10-14,22-23 ©
He Showed Me the Holy City
Coming Down Out of Heaven
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.
Second Reading – Apocalypse
22:12-14,16-17,20 ©
Come, Lord Jesus
I,
John, heard a voice speaking to me: ‘Very soon now, I shall be with you again,
bringing the reward to be given to every man according to what he deserves. I
am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Happy are those who will have washed their robes clean, so that they will have
the right to feed on the tree of life and can come through the gates into the
city.’
I,
Jesus, have sent my angel to make these revelations to you for the sake of the
churches. I am of David’s line, the root of David and the bright star of the
morning.
The
Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ Let everyone who listens answer, ‘Come.’ Then
let all who are thirsty come: all who want it may have the water of life, and
have it free.
The
one who guarantees these revelations repeats his promise: I shall indeed be
with you soon. Amen; come, Lord Jesus.
Gospel Acclamation – John
14:23
Alleluia, alleluia!
Jesus
said: ‘If anyone loves me he will keep my word,
and
my Father will love him,
and
we shall come to him.’
Alleluia!
The Gospel According to John
14:23-29 ©
A
peace the world cannot give is my gift to you 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.’
Gospel Acclamation – John
14:18
Alleluia, alleluia!
I
will not leave you orphans, says the Lord;
I
will come back to you,
and
your hearts will be full of joy.
Alleluia!
The Gospel According to John
17:20-26 ©
Father, May they be Completely
One
Jesus
raised his eyes to heaven and said:
‘Holy
Father, I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words
will believe in me.
May
they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in
you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.
I
have given them the glory you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one.
With
me in them and you in me, may they be so completely one that the world will
realise that it was you who sent me and that I have loved them as much as you
loved me.
Father,
I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may
always see the glory you have given me because you loved me before the
foundation of the world.
Father,
Righteous One, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these
have known that you have sent me.
I
have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that
the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them.
6th Sunday of Easter
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