We seem to have arrived at a “useless” Sunday of the Easter season because many parts of the Catholic world are celebrating the Ascension today. This is still the waiting period for the early Church poised for expansion. We are introduced in the 1st Reading to the great persecutor, Saul who later became our beloved St Paul. This outward growth of the Church is not just an expansion in terms of acquisition of peoples and places. As the 2nd Reading suggests, the spread of the Gospel comes as a response of creation in its entirety waiting for its Creator, Saviour and Lord. It is in this context that John’s Gospel makes a lot of sense.
Taken from the Farewell Discourse, Jesus reaffirms His total union with the Father. Over and over, He prayed for unity amongst His followers because the unity of Christians reflects the union between the Father and the Son. In Jesus’ prayer to the Father, He expresses care and concern for the Disciples that He will leave behind. But even as Jesus commends all who follow Him to the Father, what is profoundly interesting are the admission and the appeal in the prayer expressed before today’s Gospel passage.
Firstly, Jesus acknowledged that His followers would be hated because they were not supposed to be of this world. Yes, they are “from” this world but they are not “of” this world. What differentiates Christians is their sanctification in the truth. Truth is rather tricky because it does not refer to “my” truth or to “your” truth as if truth were a possession that one can claim so as to have an upper hand. Truth points to Christ and His teaching through the Church because the Church is the only human institution guaranteed by the Spirit from inerrancy in matters of doctrine and morals. Submission to the orthodox Church teaching is to be sanctified by and to be a humble servant of Truth. This will definitely entail “suffering”.
Secondly, despite the world’s opposition, Jesus pleaded the Father not to remove His disciples from this world. The struggles and suffering that disciples undergo in the name of Christ are essential to making an impact in this world. However, this request of Jesus that the Father allows Christians to undergo trials and tribulations runs against the current grain of helicopter parenting. You may resonate with the phenomenon of parents who go out of their way to shield their children from harm and hurt. Parents may feel defensive hearing this but say, we acknowledge that it is natural for parents to be protective as they should be. However, over-protection has a psychological and social cost of disabling children. Good parenting means journeying with rather than attempting to remove the hurt. We need failures or even shame to learn and disallowing our children to feel disappointed is not good. Furthermore, parents have expressed how they have sacrificed much so that their offspring can have a more secure future. In the face of well-intention, how many children have responded with “What you want for me is not what I want for myself!”. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.
Life is not meant to be a bed of roses. We do not live a charmed life but instead, like Jesus, we face existential challenges. In our suffering, God is not testing our faith but rather, He allows trials to purify it. Imagine this scenario of missionary priest or religious who is unable to endure a little heat or humidity. Why? His previous life was nothing short of pure comfort and convenience. Untested and unproven, he is not able to rise up to the challenge of personal inconvenience. How to be a missionary?
Jesus predicted that those who follow Him would be hated. Should we then be surprised by hostility? Or do we cave in the second we encounter resistance? Today, do you think that hatred or hostility come from non-Christians? Three days ago, we celebrated St Augustine of Canterbury—the Apostle to the English. Pope St Gregory the Great sent him to England to Christianise the pagans. Christianity did not take root amongst the Anglo-Saxons as much as it did with the Celts. Through St Augustine, pagan England embraced Christianity.
The example of St Augustine of Canterbury illustrates that the normal process in evangelisation is that pagans become Christians. At present, the process no longer holds true. Firstly, the England now is representative of Europe in general. The so-called West is supposedly “Christian” in character. But the empty cathedrals and churches are sad reminders of what Europe has become. Benedict XVI made an analysis to this effect that the West has become the birthplace of a new paganism. In fact, this paganism is becoming more and more the Church. We are not threatened by the “outside” but really by the “inside”.
The Church is no longer, as she once was, a Church composed of pagans who have become Christians. She is now a Church of pagans who call themselves Christians. The problem is not that these so-called neo-pagans do not practise the faith. Rather, they choose what they want to believe and from there try to impose their personal “creed” unto the Church. Give you two glaring examples. President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Both proudly proclaim themselves to be devout Catholics but each staunchly takes positions contrary to what the Catholic Church teaches.
Christ prayed the Father not to shield us from troubles because He knows that the mission to evangelise is not helped by our inability to withstand the complications and complexities of life. The need to numb ourselves from pains and rejections has made the missionary enterprise more formidable and daunting.
Evangelisation is supposed to be “ad extra”. Today, our greatest test is evangelisation “ad intra”. There is no greater test than to preach to your family and friends. “Physician, heal thyself” as Jesus was quoted to say. Or “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”. The fear of contemptuous familiarity is a powerful deterrent when it comes to preaching to a relative or a close friend.
All baptised have the vocation of labouring to spread the Gospel. More and more it is the Church who needs to be re-evangelised. In a sense, it would have been better to live in the days of St Augustine. It is easier to convert pagans to Christians than to re-Christianise “Catholics” who have reverted to paganism. In the preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit, Jesus knows that His disciples must face this challenge of re-evangelisation head on and not be shielded from the difficulties involved. Dialogue is fraught with difficulties when merely putting ideas across can be shouted down by cancel, mob or woke cultures. Hatred or hostility within families, between relatives and friends can be deeply intense, more than with strangers. This is the same in the family of believers, the Church.
In praying for us, Jesus is assuring us that where trouble is, He will always be there in His Spirit to accompany and to strengthen us. What remains in our family and in the Church is that more and more we should become the open Bible that others can read which means that we ought to convert the pagans in us first before attempting to convince the pagans outside.
