6TH MONDAY HOMILY OF EASTER – YEAR B

6TH MONDAY HOMILY OF EASTER – YEAR B

HOMILY THEME: WOMEN EVANGELISM!

BY: Fr. Benedict AGBO

Act 16: 11 – 15, Jn 15: 26 – 16: 1

Before his ascension, Jesus gave an assignment/ mission to his disciples as we read in today’s gospel : ‘When the advocate comes… the Spirit of truth…he will be my witnesses ..and you too will be my witnesses’. Jesus gave different titles to the Holy Spirit; ADVOCATE, SPIRIT OF TRUTH, COMFORTER, HELPER … so that anybody who calls himself/ herself a Christian, filled with the Holy Spirit must relate with the above attributes of the Holy Spirit whether male or female. Our vocation is to belong to Jesus; to be on his side always, to campaign for him, to be his mouthpiece wherever we find ourselves, to be his ambassadors.

ALSO RECOMMENDED: 6TH MONDAY HOMILY OF EASTER – YEAR B

One area we should give credit to women in the New Testament is for their fervour in continuing the mission of Christ. Left to the male apostles, I am not sure the message of salvation which Jesus brought would have been propagated. The fire of evangelization would have doused after the burial of Christ. Nobody would have even remembered where they buried him since the apostles all ran away. But the women kept the fellowship. From the dawn of Christianity to this day, women have been in the forefront of witnessing to Christ; Mary gave her ‘fiat’, Elizabeth sang his first manifesto, Mary the sister of Lazarus did the anointing of his feet, Mary of Magdala continued the embalment process immediately after his death and in the process saw and spread the news of his resurrection. Here the ‘gossiping tendency’ in women was brought to use for evangelism.

In today’s 1st reading we see where the charitable tendencies of women were also brought to use for evangelism during the 2nd missionary journey of St Paul in Europe. Lydia proposed to accommodate and feed PPaul and his evangelical team in her house. She made this request so passionately that Paul, despite his celibate caution, had to accept the offer because they needed it. That in no little way facilitated their work of evangelization in Thyatira, Neapolis, Philippi and the whole of that Roman colony around the district of Macedonia.

In our own time, in most Churches, it is the women who are in the majority in our Parish churches; It is the women who welcome Priests and Seminarians, feed and accommodate them; through yearly projects like August Meeting, they support the progress of many parishes. Thousands of religious congregations of Sisters are engaged in prayers and services fuelling the engine of evangelization in our various localities. Some keep wondering why the women are underrepresented in the authorized ministry of today’s Church? I guess it is a problem of culture more than dogma. Many churches (especially the orthodox churches) still see the priesthood as exclusively a male vocation. Christ did (perhaps due to the Jewish culture) ; Paul did (perhaps due to his little chauvinism) ; the early apostles did. Today, our African culture is even more inalienable to women ordination and so, the Church may not safely thread that part for now. But we can involve them more in service ministries, distribution of Holy Communion, catechesis, marriage instructions, strategic evangelization, youth apostolate, christian education, etc. The gospel says: ‘You, too (male and female) will be my witnesses’. We need to rise up to the challenges of evangelization in our country today and put all hands and resources on deck rather than waste our energies in useless feministic or chauvinistic struggles. May God bless you today!

FOR A SIMILAR HOMILY, CLICK HERE >>>>>