CATHOLIC HOMILIES: 5TH SUNDAY OF EASTER HOMILY (YEAR A)

CATHOLIC HOMILIES: 5TH SUNDAY OF EASTER HOMILY (YEAR A)

HOMILY THEME: CHRISTIAN LIFE; A JOURNEY OF FAITH

BY: Fr. Cyril Unachukwu CCE

HOMILY: The Christian Life is not lived in oblivion. It is a style of life that opens one up to this world, to its beauty and godliness but also to its challenges and obstacles. Much more than these, the Christian Life imbues one also with the greatest and insurmountable power with which one can make progress and succeed and be victorious with all of one’s attention focused on the world beyond. The capacity and the docility to follow the Christian style of life are received in faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit and from the merits of the Risen Lord, who is the “Way, the Truth and the Life.” May our lives be established on Christ the unshakeable Foundation of our existence; Amen.

In Christ is found the plenitude of everything necessary to sustain us; He is the way that keeps us on the right and proper path and that leads us to our proper destination. He is the truth with which to defeat the world with its falsehoods and deceptions. He is the life that transcends that which the world can offer and in Him is life secured. Christ is our mission and vision! Christ made this evident in His words to His disciples in the Gospel Reading of today (John 14:1-12). It is inevitable to always turn to Christ! In moments of uncertainty and lost of orientation; Christ is the ultimate answer. In moments of doubt and confusion, only Christ can clear the clouds. In moments of great challenges and dangers to life, as is the case with the Pandemic of the COVID-19, Christ remains the Life that keeps us alive. Any attempt to evade Christ is an already failed endeavour; a blind and ill-fated adventure destined for doom. An encounter with Christ, poised in faith, opens every believer to the world of endless positive possibilities. It is an encounter that truly affirms the words of Christ; “I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works.” This was the same encounter that shaped the early Christian communities. They discovered the treasures that are in Christ and they went forth, surmounting many pressures and travails, to bring these treasures to the ends of the earth. All of us who believe are borne, directly or indirectly, from the missionary witness of these bearers and diffusers of the Gospel of Christ.

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The First Reading (Acts 6:1-7) recounts the gradual increase in the number of believers and how, irrespective of their differences and challenges, they were able to focus on that which holds them together; faith in Christ. With their attention fixed on Christ and on the preaching of the Gospel, “the word of the Lord continued to spread: the number of disciples in Jerusalem was greatly increased.” In the face of this increase, one thing remained certain about the disciples, Christ was the deciding principle of their actions and words and devotion. They recognised that Christ was and is still the foundation of their existence and that outside of Him, they are nothing. As believers in our ever changing world, this must be our story too! To recognise the centrality of the Risen Lord and the vision He has called us to pursue. It was this vision that kept the disciples together. This is a vision that can only be realised in Christ and with Christ. It is a vision that has its root in God the Father of us all, executed and achieved by Christ His only begotten Son and sustained through the ages by the ever-abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the vision that brings us into the reality that we “are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God Who called us out of the darkness into His wonderful light” (I Peter 2:4-9). It is a vision that keeps us ever conscious of our identity for we belong to a lineage that has its origin in the divine, rooted and sustained in the divine and is oriented towards the divine. It is a vision that makes clear to us our ultimate destination as we heard from the Lord; “there are many rooms in my Father’s house… I am going now to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I share return to take you with me.” It is a vision that reveals to us that Christ is the only possible means to reach our ultimate destination; “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

As we continue on this journey of faith, with our proper vision set before us by the Risen Lord, we invoke the love of God upon each and every one of us as we place all our Hope in Him; Amen.

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