Fifth Sunday of Easter

Dominica V Paschae C
18 May 2025

The Gospel passage today takes us to St. John’s account of Jesus’ extended discourse at the Last Supper.  In this brief selection the Lord refers to his apostles both as children and disciples.  Calling them “children” is curious because they are full grown men.  Using that term can serve as a signal that something unique is going on here.  The Lord is claiming the disparity in the relationship to his apostles.  He is God.  And in that relationship all people, no matter their age, are his children.  The apostles are also “disciples” which is the word for “student”.  The apostles, as disciples, as students, had some distinct advantages over us present-day disciples, students of the Lord.  They lived directly with the Lord and learned from him.  They witnessed his miracles.  But, we also have some advantages that they did not have.  We benefit from the rich reflection of a more than 2,000-year tradition in the Catholic faith of diving deeply into all the things we must study and learn.  We have a rich body of thought that can guide us with resources that were not available to the apostles.  The Church has weighed in on so many experiences of human life and struggles and the resulting counsel and teaching also instruct us.  I think this gospel passage can serve as a paradigm for the advantage that we have.  I say that because you and I, present-day disciple-students, hear this passage already knowing the historical fact of Jesus’ suffering, death, resurrection and ascension.  We hear this passage and we rest on so much reflection about what the Lord was doing both at the Last Supper and afterward.  The apostles did not have that advantage.  They heard these words before the historical events took place and likely may not have been aware at the time of the import of these words, when considered against the backdrop of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  For them, this passage took place in the context of a Passover ritual.  For us, with the advantage of history, we know that this Passover ritual was altogether unique and new.  It was the initiation of a new covenant which the Lord commanded be done in his memory.  And so today, we gather at the Holy Mass knowing that our catholic faith tells us that we experience here in sacramental form the very gift of the sacrificial love of Jesus that was offered on the Cross.  That gift of the sacrificial love of Jesus is a living gift because by virtue of the resurrection, it is the Lord’s living and resurrected Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity that is offered in sacramental form in the Holy Eucharist.

 Signaling that something different and new is taking place by calling grown men his children, the Lord also calls them to be his students.  He claims his divine right by adding to the commandments.  This should catch our attention.  Who would or could add to the commandments, but God?  The Lord says, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.”  His command and his teaching of these his students is quite specific.  How are they to love one another?  “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”  The new commandment is to love one another as Jesus himself loves.  Whatever the apostles would have thought about how Jesus loves in that moment and at that supper, can any of us doubt that these apostle-students learned something altogether new with clarifying precision the next day as they saw him on the Cross?  This new commandment is no easy, sentimental command.  If you keep the crucifix before your eyes you know how it is that Jesus loves.  It is a call to sacrificial love.  It is a command to lay down your life for the good of another.  Jesus also says elsewhere that no one has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.  The cross, sacrificial love, leads to the resurrection.  We do not have the resurrection without sacrificial love.

 We are the Lord’s present-day students.  We also are his children.  We hear this Gospel passage already holding onto the knowledge of what happened after the Last Supper (the suffering, death, and resurrection), but still this is no easy or sentimental commandment for us either.  We have the advantage of so much reflection and learning that the apostles did not have when they first heard this new commandment.  But, whatever advantage that may be to us, does not absolve us from the difficult work of loving sacrificially as Jesus loves.  What did we hear in the second reading?  “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

 That work of dying to ourselves in order to love sacrificially is hard work and a lifetime’s work.  We are called to die to selfishness and self-absorption.  We are called to die to our own opinions that would place us apart from the communion of the Church.  We are called to die to claiming sovereignty over ourselves, but rather to see ourselves as children of the Father and subjects of the Kingdom of Christ.  We are called to die to those desires that are bad and sinful, and even to die to good things to which we may have a disordered and excessive attachment.  We are called to put on the mind of Christ.  We are called to deny self and pick up the cross.  In short: We are called to be Christ!  For only in being united to Christ as members of his Body will we be able to follow the path to our own resurrection.

Did you notice that the Gospel passage began by telling us that Judas had already left the Last Supper?  He never heard the new commandment.  When you consider what Judas symbolizes, that can signal to us that serious sin and hardness of heart prevent us from hearing and receiving the new commandment.  And it certainly impedes our ability to love sacrificially as Christ loves.  Thus, confession and absolution restore our proper life and place us again as children and students at the feet of Jesus, so that we can learn from his style of love.

 Finally, notice the full force of this new commandment.  The Lord says that loving one another as he loves, loving sacrificially, “is how all will know that you are my disciples”.  We really need to think about that.  You see, it is not in claiming the label “disciple” or “Christian” that others will know to whom we belong.  It is not by others knowing that we go to St. Monica and are registered and active here.  It is not in having some catholic bumper stickers on our car.  It is not in religious emblems we might wear.  It is not in the collection of crucifixes and crosses we have.  It is not in the religious books on our shelves.  As fine and valuable as all of those things may be, it is not by these that others will know we belong to Christ in a convincing and converting way.  Jesus says that it is in living this new commandment to love as he loves, to love sacrificially, to die to our fallen nature and to live united to him – this is how all will know that we belong to the Lord and are his disciples.

  Here at the Holy Mass, with the advantage of thousands of years of lived discipleship we know ourselves to be participating in the very paschal mystery of the Lord.  It is the participation in his suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension by which he completed a new exodus, leading us from slavery to sin and to newness of life in the Promised Land of Heaven.  Here we are renewed by the Sacred Scriptures and the Holy Eucharist to be partakers of the sacrificial way the Lord loves us.  In listening to his Word and in worthily receiving this Sacrament we continue to learn as disciples so that we are changed and strengthened to love as the Lord loves us.