10/05/2009 - 5th. Sunday in Easter
Season - B
1st. Reading Acts 9,26-31 Psalm 21 2nd. Reading 1Jn 3,18-24 Gospel Jn 15,1-8
"Holy be your name". As we enter into the prayer we continue to fix
our eyes on the Father to meet with his: in them we can see his deep desires.
This is very much to Jesus' heart, more than we should think of our needs. He
knows that in as much as we preoccupy ourselves we won't be happy, does not
change us, or makes us better. Let us look at what is to our Father's heart,
and make ours his thoughts so that we can become like him! Reading the Scriptures
we discover that one of the strong desires of God is the sanctification of his
name. It is not a selfish desire of God; on the contrary, it is his way of blessing
us deep down. Listening to the prophet Ezekiel, in fact, we come to know that
God, gather together his children to purify them and give them a new heart and
a new spirit so that they can sanctify his name! The sanctification of the name
of God is an expression that holds together a series of blessing in our favor.
God makes himself know to the entire world and bring to him all through all
he does with us and for us. He suffered to watch his people dispersed among
other peoples after their deportation to Babylon; today he see us sad because
of the loneliness in which we live, and see us also weak in front of the temptations
by which the world seduce and deceive us. He knows that our heart is corrupt
by many idols of the world of today and hence he sees our need to be purified;
the idolatry of wealth, of pleasure and the presumed rights make us loose sight
of the value of the cross and impede us to look at God as Father, as a true
daddy. He himself will find the ways to remove from our hearts the lie of the
false gods. Will he reprove us? Will he visit us with pain or sufferings from
sickness, mourning, or persecution? Will his love for us be come like the care
of a doctor who, to heal, give sour medicine, or that of a surgeon who amputates
part of the body to save the life of the patient? Our Father wants to make us
partake in his life by giving us the Holy Spirit: bring us together and purify
us to have us as his children, to enjoy his presence and so our life is full
of his love and perfect of his mercy.
The First Reading tells us about the return of Saul to Jerusalem after he met
Jesus who had blind him and conquered the heart. Who can say what the newly
converted young man was expecting getting closer to the apostles and the other
believers! He found only mistrust. All were scared of him. All were afraid to
trust him. Barnabas needs to intervene on his behalf. He had known him in Damascus
and witnessed the change of his heart. After having overcome this, he met with
another problem in the Holy City, that of the Jews, to whom he started to proclaim
the faith in the name of Jesus, and who tried to kill him that the community
was constrained to help him escape back to Tarsus the city in which he was born.
He experienced a series of pruning! Through this he understood the words Jesus
had trusted his disciples at the last supper. That night Jesus had spoke of
the Father as a gardener, who goes to the vineyard with the proper tool, and
with no mercy, prunes the branches. The young Saul must have felt like a branch
being pruned! The gardener knows that the fruit of the vine will be more beautiful
and good after the pruning, and so, even the spiritual fruit of the believer
will be much more abundant for the Kingdom of God after this one let God use
him or her. Every Christian has to go through pruning that can happen through
providential circumstances: an illness, events that stop a desired thing, fulfilling
dreams in relation with work or forming a family, sticks in the spokes or contradictions
of every kind. The believer knows that these trials challenge and call for patience,
and that they are known to the Father who is guiding everyone with his gracious
love and who sees more beyond our intelligence and our desires. In any case
the believer, or better, we, we are to stay at peace, calm and trustful. We
are to remain tied up with the Son of God, Jesus, hanging unto him who carried
the cross which instead of keeping him from saving us, allowed him to fulfill
the salvation of all men! United with him, even in suffering caused by contradictions
and harsh pruning, our life will bear fruit, mature fruit, accepted by God and
useful to others. The one who remains united with Jesus, even though he wont
do anything the world appreciates, only by his mysterious presence, will be
a blessing to many!
The apostle who was particularly loved by Jesus, John, exhorts us to take care
of one of the fruits without which one cannot be united with the Lord: Love!
Love is to be lived with all our possibility, with words and deeds. And the
facts that are born of love show that we are in the truth that we are in God
and God in us!
Today therefore the Lord enlightens our way: the trails and the crosses are
not a punishment, but signs of the love the Father have for us, to form us to
be able to love as he loves! Then we experience that, after we were united with
Jesus in his death on the cross, we will be, also with him in the joy of the
resurrection.