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romancatholicreflections · 7 years

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14th May >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflection on John 14:1-12 for the Fifth Sunday of Easter,Year A: ‘I am the Way’.

Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A Gospel (Except USA) John 14:1-12 Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.Trust in God still, and trust in me.There are many rooms in my Father’s house;if there were not, I should have told you.I am going now to prepare a place for you,and after I have gone and prepared you a place,I shall return to take you with me;so that where I amyou may be too.You know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus said: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.No one can come to the Father except through me.If you know me, you know my Father too.From this moment you know him and have seen him.’ Philip said, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied.’ ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip,’ said Jesus to him ‘and you still do not know me? ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father,so how can you say, “Let us see the Father”?Do you not believethat I am in the Father and the Father is in me?The words I say to you I do not speak as from myself:it is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work.You must believe me when I saythat I am in the Father and the Father is in me;believe it on the evidence of this work, if for no other reason.I tell you most solemnly,whoever believes in mewill perform the same works as I do myself,he will perform even greater works,because I am going to the Father.’ Gospel (USA) John 14:1–12 I am the way and the truth and the life. Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.” Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.” Reflections (3) (i) Fifth Sunday of Easter We have all known people who have cleared a way for us. They opened up a door for us; they made it possible for us to do something that we would not have been able to do without them. In the gospels we think of John the Baptist, to whom our church is dedicated, as such a person. He cleared a way for Jesus. He saw his work as levelling hills and filling in valleys in people’s hearts and lives so that a way would be cleared for the coming of Jesus. In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus goes one further than John the Baptist. He doesn’t just claim to prepare a way; he says ‘I am the Way’. According to the Acts of the Apostles the first Christians were called ‘followers of the Way’. If we were to ask Jesus, ‘In what sense are you the way?’ he would surely answer, ‘I am the way to God’. Having said, ‘I am the Way’, he immediately declares to Thomas in our gospel reading, ‘No one can come to the Father except through me’. He is the way to God because he is God in human form, which is why he says to Philip in our gospel reading, ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Jesus is the human face of God, the fullest revelation of God possible in a human life. It is in that sense that he is the Way to God. He brings God to us, reveals God to us, by all he said and did, by his death and resurrection, by his sending of the Holy Spirit. Jesus not only brings God to us but he brings us to God. That is the promise he makes at the beginning of today’s gospel reading. Jesus speaks to his disciples of eternal life using the image of the house of his Father with its many rooms. He promises them that one day he will bring them with him to that many roomed house of God his Father so that where he, Jesus, is, they may be also. At the end of our earthly lives, Jesus promises us to bring us to God. Those opening verses of today’s gospel reading are often chosen as the gospel reading at a funeral Mass. They speak very powerfully to our sense of loss at the time of the death of a loved one and as we approach our own death. Jesus is reassuring us that death is not just an ending but also an opening, a way that leads to God. Jesus is the Way in that he brings God to us in this life, and he brings us to God at the end of our lives. He is the way for God to come to us and the way for us to go to God. In the gospel reading, Jesus not only says ‘I am the Way’, but in the same breath he makes a second claim, ‘I am the Truth’. These two claims are very closely interconnected. Because Jesus is the Way to God, he can reveal the truth about God. Because we are all made in God’s image and Jesus is the perfect image of God, Jesus also reveals the truth about ourselves, the truth about human life. As well as showing us God, he shows us what it is to be fully human. He is the human person fully alive. We recognize in him our humanity at its best. The more we grow into the image of Jesus, the more human we become. A couple of chapters before our gospel reading in John’s gospel Jesus had declared that the truth will set you free. As the Truth, Jesus sets us free to live fully human lives, to live as God intends and desires us to live. As well as claiming to be the Way and the Truth, Jesus makes a third claim in that gospel reading ‘I am the Life’. This claim is closely linked to the other two. It is because Jesus is the way to God and reveals the truth about God that he can share the life of God with us. Jesus had declared earlier in John’s gospel, ‘I came that they may have life and have it to the full’. He is declaring there that in and through our relationship with him, we begin to live with the life of God here and now and will enter into that life fully in eternity. The life of God is the life of Love. To live with the life of God is to love as God loves. Jesus is declaring that in and through our relationship with him we are empowered to love in the way God loves, in the way Jesus, as the revelation of God, loves. That is what Jesus means when he says at the end of that gospel reading, ‘whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself; they will perform even greater works’. He is speaking there of those works of love that reveal God, which Jesus performed, and which, as risen Lord, he will continue to perform through the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of his followers. Jesus has given us a great deal to ponder in that simple but profound statement, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’. And/Or (ii) Fifth Sunday of Easter Today we celebrate Priesthood Sunday. It is a special day in our diocese when we reflect on the call to serve the Lord and the people of God through the ministry of the priest. For most of my life, my home parish was Christ the King in Cabra. It was there that I felt the call to priesthood during my teenage years. I was an altar server in that church for many years. Even when I came to the age when most altar servers would move on, I stayed around. I used to help the sacristan in various ways in my spare time. In that way I got to know the priests of the parish very well and I saw the work they did and the lives they lived at close quarters. In those days there was a parish priest and three curates in the parish. They were all very different from each other. They were priests, but they were first and foremost human beings, each with their own unique personality and character traits, each with their own particular gifts and limitations. Yet, I sensed that what they had in common was a love for the Lord and a desire to serve the Lord and his people. My own desire to be a priest was formed through that close contact with the priests of the parish. I went into Clonliffe College when I was only eighteen years of age, just after completing my Leaving Certificate. Nowadays, Vocations Directors would suggest that an eighteen year old would wait a few years longer and get more experience of life, and there is probably a lot of wisdom in that, especially today as times as so different. In spite of some times of struggle, I have been basically very happy as a priest. The support and the witness of people among whom I have lived and worked has been a huge factor in my feeling at home as a priest. You could easily underestimate just how important you are as a faith community to the priests who live and work among you. Of course, recent years have been difficult for priests and for all who love the Lord and his church. Priests, in particular, have suffered the shame and loss of reputation brought on by the scandals involving priests and the inadequate way they have been dealt with by church authorities. Our hearts have been broken at hearing the stories of the victims of abuse. Our hope is that the procedures in place will ensure that what has happened will never happen again. Much has changed since I entered Clonliffe. At that time there were eighty seminarians for Dublin in Clonliffe College; today there are sixteen seminarians studying for the priesthood in Dublin; they are either studying in St Partick’s seminary Maynooth or they are on pastoral placement in Dublin parishes. The year I entered Clonliffe, there were probably about 15 priests ordained for the Diocese. This year no one will be ordained. The ration of priests to lay people in the Diocese is changing rapidly. I have often wondered whether that extraordinary transformation over a thirty year period is because less young men are answering the Lord’s call to the ordained priesthood or because the Lord is calling less people to the ordained priesthood. I am struck by this morning’s first reading in that regard. When the twelve apostles discovered that they could no longer take on all the work they had been doing, they put it to the young church to select others to take on some of their work so that they could devote themselves to what they considered to be the essentials, namely, ‘prayer and the service of the word’, prayer and preaching. Maybe the Lord is saying to us today, ‘Look I want priests to go back to the essentials of their ministry and for all sorts of other ministries to be taken on by all sorts of other people who are gifted by the Holy Spirit for such work’. If that is what the Lord is saying to the churches today, most of us priests would be very happy with such a message. In the second reading, Peter reminds the whole church that they are a holy priesthood called to offer spiritual sacrifices. What are such spiritual sacrifices only lives of faith, hope and love offered to God and to God’s people? Peter emphasizes the baptismal priesthood, the fundamental priesthood which we all share; yet, at the end of that letter he explicitly addresses the elders or the presbyters of the church and calls on them to tend the flock of God that is in their charge, by being examples to them. The ordained priesthood emerges from the priesthood of the baptized and is there to serve it after the example of the good shepherd. We are in the season of Easter and Easter is a season of hope. We must always be people of hope and never allow ourselves to be overcome by discouragement because the Lord is always at work among his followers. We have his wonderful promise to us in today’s gospel reading, ‘Whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself; they will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father’. If we remain a people of faith, hope and love, we can be confident that we will see those greater works that the Lord speaks about. And/Or (iii) Fifth Sunday of Easter Most of us do not like conflict and try to avoid it. Yet, we know from our experience that some element of conflict is inevitable in life. We invariably find ourselves in conflict with those who live or work with us. We often struggle to know how best to resolve the conflict. If we say nothing, resentment and anger can build up within us. If we say too much, we can make a bad situation worse. A third party can be a great help in enabling the conflict to be resolved in a way that is in everyone’s best interest. In today’s first reading we hear of a situation of conflict in the early church. The Hellenists, or Greek speaking Jewish Christians, made a complaint against the Hebrews, or Aramaic speaking Jewish Christians. There was tension between two language groups within the church, with one group feeling that their more vulnerable members, the widows, were being neglected. We know that there is more to language than just a set of words. Any language expresses a certain outlook on the world, embodies a particular culture. Even from its earliest days, the church was multi-cultural. There was always the potential for one group to feel that the other group were being better served. A third party helped to resolve the particular conflict mentioned in that first reading. The twelve apostles stepped up and showed the kind of leadership needed to resolve the developing conflict. They asked the community to call forth more leaders to serve. The twelve recognized that the burden of service needed to be carried by a greater number of people. A small group of people, like the twelve, could not do everything well. If the twelve were to devote themselves to the ministry of prayer and of the word, others needed to take responsibility for other ministries, such as the ministry of hospitality and of attending to the physical welfare of the needy. When this happened, the reading states that ‘the number of disciples in Jerusalem was greatly increased’. In every age the church has to face the same kind of issues that we find the early church struggling with in the first reading. In any parish community there will be tensions similar to those present in the church of Jerusalem. Some groups or some individuals in a parish, like the Hellenists in the first reading, can often feel that they are being neglected. There are a whole variety of ways in which people need to be served within a parish community. If this is to happen, the burden and the privilege of service has to be shared by a large number of people. We need parishes in which everyone’s gifts are called forth and placed at the service of others in the community. The twelve apostles realized that they had an important contribution to make to the community, offering it the ministry of prayer and of the word. They also realized that there were services they could not provide. They were confident that the Holy Spirit would equip other people for these other tasks of service. We can have the same confidence today. The Lord will always provide what the church needs. The second collection today is for the support of those training for priesthood in Dublin Diocese, replacing the Share collection. In a sense the core of the ministry of the ordained priest in the church is what the first reading calls ‘prayer and the ministry of the word’. The Diocese has twelve seminarians in the national seminary, Maynooth College. It is a small number compared to the ninety seminarians that were in the Diocesan seminary, Clonliffe College, twenty five years ago. For the first time in many years there will be no ordination to the priesthood for Dublin Diocese this year. The facts and figures could easily give cause for concern. Yet, today’s first reading encourages us to believe that the Lord will always provide for the church. The Lord will see to it that there are people, ‘filled with the Spirit and with wisdom’, available to serve the church. St. Peter in the second reading reminds all believers that, in virtue of their baptism, they are a holy priesthood, called to offer the spiritual sacrifice of their lives to God and to his people. St. Peter wants us to take seriously our wonderful baptismal identity, and to be open to the ways in which the Lord is asking us to live out our baptismal calling in service of others. If we take our baptism seriously and try to live it to the full, the rest will follow, including a sufficient number of ordained priests to meet the needs of the church. The encouraging tone of both the first and second reading this morning is heard again in the gospel reading. Jesus turns to his troubled disciples on the eve of his death and says to them, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me’. At a time when the disciples were struggling with a sense of loss, Jesus speaks of abundance, telling them that there are ‘many rooms in my Father’s house’. At a time when the disciples feared that the work of Jesus was coming to an end, Jesus tells them that those who believe in him will do even greater works than he has done, because he is going to the Father. These words encourage us to have an expectant faith. The Lord is at work in his church; he is doing a great work and he wants us all to be part of it, in different ways. We can be confident that the Lord will work in a very special way through our new Pope, Benedict XVI. We pray that his leadership, like that of the twelve, will call forth the gifts of all the baptized in new ways. Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland. Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ieJoinus via our webcam. Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC. Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf. Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

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frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 7 years

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14th May >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflection on John 14:1-12 for the Fifth Sunday of Easter,Year A: 'I am the Way'.

Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A

Gospel (Except USA)

John 14:1-12

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.Trust in God still, and trust in me.There are many rooms in my Father’s house;if there were not, I should have told you.I am going now to prepare a place for you,and after I have gone and prepared you a place,I shall return to take you with me;so that where I amyou may be too.You know the way to the place where I am going.’

Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus said:

‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.No one can come to the Father except through me.If you know me, you know my Father too.From this moment you know him and have seen him.’

Philip said, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied.’ ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip,’ said Jesus to him ‘and you still do not know me?

‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father,so how can you say, “Let us see the Father”?Do you not believethat I am in the Father and the Father is in me?The words I say to you I do not speak as from myself:it is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work.You must believe me when I saythat I am in the Father and the Father is in me;believe it on the evidence of this work, if for no other reason.I tell you most solemnly,whoever believes in mewill perform the same works as I do myself,he will perform even greater works,because I am going to the Father.’

Gospel (USA)

John 14:1–12

I am the way and the truth and the life.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.” Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.”

Reflections (3)

(i) Fifth Sunday of Easter

We have all known people who have cleared a way for us. They opened up a door for us; they made it possible for us to do something that we would not have been able to do without them.

In the gospels we think of John the Baptist, to whom our church is dedicated, as such a person. He cleared a way for Jesus. He saw his work as levelling hills and filling in valleys in people’s hearts and lives so that a way would be cleared for the coming of Jesus. In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus goes one further than John the Baptist. He doesn’t just claim to prepare a way; he says ‘I am the Way’. According to the Acts of the Apostles the first Christians were called ‘followers of the Way’. If we were to ask Jesus, ‘In what sense are you the way?’ he would surely answer, ‘I am the way to God’. Having said, ‘I am the Way’, he immediately declares to Thomas in our gospel reading, ‘No one can come to the Father except through me’. He is the way to God because he is God in human form, which is why he says to Philip in our gospel reading, ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Jesus is the human face of God, the fullest revelation of God possible in a human life. It is in that sense that he is the Way to God. He brings God to us, reveals God to us, by all he said and did, by his death and resurrection, by his sending of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus not only brings God to us but he brings us to God. That is the promise he makes at the beginning of today’s gospel reading. Jesus speaks to his disciples of eternal life using the image of the house of his Father with its many rooms. He promises them that one day he will bring them with him to that many roomed house of God his Father so that where he, Jesus, is, they may be also. At the end of our earthly lives, Jesus promises us to bring us to God. Those opening verses of today’s gospel reading are often chosen as the gospel reading at a funeral Mass. They speak very powerfully to our sense of loss at the time of the death of a loved one and as we approach our own death. Jesus is reassuring us that death is not just an ending but also an opening, a way that leads to God. Jesus is the Way in that he brings God to us in this life, and he brings us to God at the end of our lives. He is the way for God to come to us and the way for us to go to God.

In the gospel reading, Jesus not only says ‘I am the Way’, but in the same breath he makes a second claim, ‘I am the Truth’. These two claims are very closely interconnected. Because Jesus is the Way to God, he can reveal the truth about God. Because we are all made in God’s image and Jesus is the perfect image of God, Jesus also reveals the truth about ourselves, the truth about human life. As well as showing us God, he shows us what it is to be fully human. He is the human person fully alive. We recognize in him our humanity at its best. The more we grow into the image of Jesus, the more human we become. A couple of chapters before our gospel reading in John’s gospel Jesus had declared that the truth will set you free. As the Truth, Jesus sets us free to live fully human lives, to live as God intends and desires us to live.

As well as claiming to be the Way and the Truth, Jesus makes a third claim in that gospel reading ‘I am the Life’. This claim is closely linked to the other two. It is because Jesus is the way to God and reveals the truth about God that he can share the life of God with us. Jesus had declared earlier in John’s gospel, ‘I came that they may have life and have it to the full’. He is declaring there that in and through our relationship with him, we begin to live with the life of God here and now and will enter into that life fully in eternity. The life of God is the life of Love. To live with the life of God is to love as God loves. Jesus is declaring that in and through our relationship with him we are empowered to love in the way God loves, in the way Jesus, as the revelation of God, loves. That is what Jesus means when he says at the end of that gospel reading, ‘whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself; they will perform even greater works’. He is speaking there of those works of love that reveal God, which Jesus performed, and which, as risen Lord, he will continue to perform through the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of his followers. Jesus has given us a great deal to ponder in that simple but profound statement, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’.

And/Or

(ii) Fifth Sunday of Easter

Today we celebrate Priesthood Sunday. It is a special day in our diocese when we reflect on the call to serve the Lord and the people of God through the ministry of the priest. For most of my life, my home parish was Christ the King in Cabra. It was there that I felt the call to priesthood during my teenage years. I was an altar server in that church for many years. Even when I came to the age when most altar servers would move on, I stayed around. I used to help the sacristan in various ways in my spare time. In that way I got to know the priests of the parish very well and I saw the work they did and the lives they lived at close quarters. In those days there was a parish priest and three curates in the parish. They were all very different from each other. They were priests, but they were first and foremost human beings, each with their own unique personality and character traits, each with their own particular gifts and limitations. Yet, I sensed that what they had in common was a love for the Lord and a desire to serve the Lord and his people. My own desire to be a priest was formed through that close contact with the priests of the parish. I went into Clonliffe College when I was only eighteen years of age, just after completing my Leaving Certificate. Nowadays, Vocations Directors would suggest that an eighteen year old would wait a few years longer and get more experience of life, and there is probably a lot of wisdom in that, especially today as times as so different. In spite of some times of struggle, I have been basically very happy as a priest. The support and the witness of people among whom I have lived and worked has been a huge factor in my feeling at home as a priest. You could easily underestimate just how important you are as a faith community to the priests who live and work among you. Of course, recent years have been difficult for priests and for all who love the Lord and his church. Priests, in particular, have suffered the shame and loss of reputation brought on by the scandals involving priests and the inadequate way they have been dealt with by church authorities. Our hearts have been broken at hearing the stories of the victims of abuse. Our hope is that the procedures in place will ensure that what has happened will never happen again.

Much has changed since I entered Clonliffe. At that time there were eighty seminarians for Dublin in Clonliffe College; today there are sixteen seminarians studying for the priesthood in Dublin; they are either studying in St Partick’s seminary Maynooth or they are on pastoral placement in Dublin parishes. The year I entered Clonliffe, there were probably about 15 priests ordained for the Diocese. This year no one will be ordained. The ration of priests to lay people in the Diocese is changing rapidly. I have often wondered whether that extraordinary transformation over a thirty year period is because less young men are answering the Lord’s call to the ordained priesthood or because the Lord is calling less people to the ordained priesthood. I am struck by this morning’s first reading in that regard. When the twelve apostles discovered that they could no longer take on all the work they had been doing, they put it to the young church to select others to take on some of their work so that they could devote themselves to what they considered to be the essentials, namely, ‘prayer and the service of the word’, prayer and preaching. Maybe the Lord is saying to us today, ‘Look I want priests to go back to the essentials of their ministry and for all sorts of other ministries to be taken on by all sorts of other people who are gifted by the Holy Spirit for such work’. If that is what the Lord is saying to the churches today, most of us priests would be very happy with such a message. In the second reading, Peter reminds the whole church that they are a holy priesthood called to offer spiritual sacrifices. What are such spiritual sacrifices only lives of faith, hope and love offered to God and to God’s people? Peter emphasizes the baptismal priesthood, the fundamental priesthood which we all share; yet, at the end of that letter he explicitly addresses the elders or the presbyters of the church and calls on them to tend the flock of God that is in their charge, by being examples to them. The ordained priesthood emerges from the priesthood of the baptized and is there to serve it after the example of the good shepherd. We are in the season of Easter and Easter is a season of hope. We must always be people of hope and never allow ourselves to be overcome by discouragement because the Lord is always at work among his followers. We have his wonderful promise to us in today’s gospel reading, ‘Whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself; they will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father’. If we remain a people of faith, hope and love, we can be confident that we will see those greater works that the Lord speaks about.

And/Or

(iii) Fifth Sunday of Easter

Most of us do not like conflict and try to avoid it. Yet, we know from our experience that some element of conflict is inevitable in life. We invariably find ourselves in conflict with those who live or work with us. We often struggle to know how best to resolve the conflict. If we say nothing, resentment and anger can build up within us. If we say too much, we can make a bad situation worse. A third party can be a great help in enabling the conflict to be resolved in a way that is in everyone’s best interest.

In today’s first reading we hear of a situation of conflict in the early church. The Hellenists, or Greek speaking Jewish Christians, made a complaint against the Hebrews, or Aramaic speaking Jewish Christians. There was tension between two language groups within the church, with one group feeling that their more vulnerable members, the widows, were being neglected. We know that there is more to language than just a set of words. Any language expresses a certain outlook on the world, embodies a particular culture. Even from its earliest days, the church was multi-cultural. There was always the potential for one group to feel that the other group were being better served. A third party helped to resolve the particular conflict mentioned in that first reading. The twelve apostles stepped up and showed the kind of leadership needed to resolve the developing conflict. They asked the community to call forth more leaders to serve. The twelve recognized that the burden of service needed to be carried by a greater number of people. A small group of people, like the twelve, could not do everything well. If the twelve were to devote themselves to the ministry of prayer and of the word, others needed to take responsibility for other ministries, such as the ministry of hospitality and of attending to the physical welfare of the needy. When this happened, the reading states that ‘the number of disciples in Jerusalem was greatly increased’.

In every age the church has to face the same kind of issues that we find the early church struggling with in the first reading. In any parish community there will be tensions similar to those present in the church of Jerusalem. Some groups or some individuals in a parish, like the Hellenists in the first reading, can often feel that they are being neglected. There are a whole variety of ways in which people need to be served within a parish community. If this is to happen, the burden and the privilege of service has to be shared by a large number of people. We need parishes in which everyone’s gifts are called forth and placed at the service of others in the community. The twelve apostles realized that they had an important contribution to make to the community, offering it the ministry of prayer and of the word. They also realized that there were services they could not provide. They were confident that the Holy Spirit would equip other people for these other tasks of service. We can have the same confidence today. The Lord will always provide what the church needs.

The second collection today is for the support of those training for priesthood in Dublin Diocese, replacing the Share collection. In a sense the core of the ministry of the ordained priest in the church is what the first reading calls ‘prayer and the ministry of the word’. The Diocese has twelve seminarians in the national seminary, Maynooth College. It is a small number compared to the ninety seminarians that were in the Diocesan seminary, Clonliffe College, twenty five years ago. For the first time in many years there will be no ordination to the priesthood for Dublin Diocese this year. The facts and figures could easily give cause for concern. Yet, today’s first reading encourages us to believe that the Lord will always provide for the church. The Lord will see to it that there are people, ‘filled with the Spirit and with wisdom’, available to serve the church. St. Peter in the second reading reminds all believers that, in virtue of their baptism, they are a holy priesthood, called to offer the spiritual sacrifice of their lives to God and to his people. St. Peter wants us to take seriously our wonderful baptismal identity, and to be open to the ways in which the Lord is asking us to live out our baptismal calling in service of others. If we take our baptism seriously and try to live it to the full, the rest will follow, including a sufficient number of ordained priests to meet the needs of the church.

The encouraging tone of both the first and second reading this morning is heard again in the gospel reading. Jesus turns to his troubled disciples on the eve of his death and says to them, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me’. At a time when the disciples were struggling with a sense of loss, Jesus speaks of abundance, telling them that there are ‘many rooms in my Father’s house’. At a time when the disciples feared that the work of Jesus was coming to an end, Jesus tells them that those who believe in him will do even greater works than he has done, because he is going to the Father. These words encourage us to have an expectant faith. The Lord is at work in his church; he is doing a great work and he wants us all to be part of it, in different ways. We can be confident that the Lord will work in a very special way through our new Pope, Benedict XVI. We pray that his leadership, like that of the twelve, will call forth the gifts of all the baptized in new ways.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

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