Deacon Mick nailed it again! Catch the video on the St. Pat’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/stpatsak) and our YouTube channel. (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCce6fxZKR1vqgyhuTO7e7VA/)
There was a fellow named Tom and
Tom figured out a way
to remember his wife’s birthday and their wedding anniversary.
He opened an account with a florist
and told him to send flowers to his wife on those specific dates,
along with a note signed, “Your loving husband.”
Now, his wife was thrilled by the attention,
and all was great until one anniversary.
Tom had forgotten about the anniversary, as usual.
So that evening he came home as usual, saw the bouquet of flowers,
kissed his wife, and said, “Nice flowers.
Where’d you get them?”
…Tom is now quarantined…alone.
You can’t put love on cruise control or automatic pilot.
Marriage is a promise to love and honor
as well as a commitment to fidelity.
Relationships take an ongoing involvement of ourselves,
even in our relationship with God.
SO —— with God
we’re often tempted to
let fidelity to God take a back seat
as we let other things
take a higher priority in our lives than God,
such things as sports events, TV,
the internet, money, our own ego, etc.
In today’s Gospel reading,
the Lord gives three promises of fidelity to the Apostles
and to each of us.
(1) He said, “I will send you another Advocate”!
of course, the Lord is speaking, of the Holy Spirit.
Most of us have seen ads for
expensive items which
carry a small disclaimer at the bottom of the page,
“batteries are not included.”
Jesus did not give us a Gospel to follow,
a personal call to conversion,
And a way to live our life, only to say,
“By the way, you’re on your own,
batteries not included.”
Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to be the energy
and staying power in our life of faith.
That’s why, in the first reading,
the Apostles were sent to the people of Samaria
to give them the Holy Spirit so that
their faith would not depend on temporary emotion.
This Holy Spirit is manifested
not primarily in extraordinary gifts
but in the ordinary gifts of fidelity, prayer and conscience
that enable us to live our faith day by day.
(2) He said, “I will not leave you orphans.
I will come back to you.”
Remember —— these words of Jesus
are at the Last supper.
Jesus here
is referring to His return to the Apostles at Easter,
at His Resurrection.
To us today,
this promise of the Lord
is kept in the Eucharist
when Jesus comes to us in His risen presence
under the form of bread and wine
to be our strength
and to give us a pledge of eternal life with him.
The Eucharist is Jesus’ fulfillment of that promise to us.
Because of the Eucharist,
we’re not orphans, we’re never alone,
no matter what we may face.
Promise two is the gift of the Eucharist
where Jesus remains with us.
(3) Finally he promised, “If you keep my commandments,
My father and I will reveal ourselves to you and come to you.”
The presence of Christ becomes more vivid to us
as we follow the Gospel.
Our failure to follow the gospel
is like a spiritual cataract
where our faith is obstructed or clouded.
As we remove the cataracts of our life,
we start to experience the presence of the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit in a variety of ways.
The Lord gives this promise
not only to the Apostles
but to the Church and to us as a whole.
It’s our responsibility
to make sure that our life is faithful to Jesus.
The elimination of these obstructions
allows us to see the Lord more clearly in our life
and enter more deeply
into the mysterious divine life of the Trinity.
In a wonderful image in today’s Gospel,
Jesus promises those who are faithful to the Gospel
the “WE (we being the Father, Son & Holy Spirit)
will come to them and make our home with them.”
We have three promises of Jesus that
are fundamental to Christian spirituality
and to the life of the Church.
First, the promise of the Holy Spirit
to energize and sustain our fidelity to Christ.
Second, the promise of Jesus’ return
to the Apostles at Easter and the Resurrection —
and to us in the Eucharist.
Third, the promise of sharing God’s life
more powerfully now
and forever as we cleanse and clarify our lives.
We will celebrate the fulfillment
of each of these promises over the next four weeks.
Next Sunday is the Ascension.
After that is Pentecost with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
This is followed by Trinity Sunday,
the feast of the mysterious life of God
in which we can have a part.
Last comes Corpus Christi,
the Feast of the Eucharist.
My friends——
Festivals are wonderful celebrations
of the bounty of nature.
These words, these promises of Jesus
carry the gifts of a great spiritual bounty
for each of us —
and for the Church —
through the Holy Spirit,
the Eucharist
and the life of grace that can be ours today.
In the Gospel,
Jesus gives every one of us
the promise of a magnificent spiritual life and destiny
and, as the next four Sundays will show,
with the promises of Jesus,
his fidelity is forever and
my friends, “the batteries are included.”