Seventh Sunday of Easter Homily Year C

SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER HOMILY YEAR C
Acts 7:55-60 Rev 22:12-14, 16f., 20 Jn 17:20-26
Let Us All Be One, For Christ’s Sake!

1st Reading – Acts 7:55-60

⁵⁵ Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God,

⁵⁶ and Stephen said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

⁵⁷ But they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him together.

⁵⁸ They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him. The witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.

⁵⁹ As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

⁶⁰ Then he fell to his knees and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them;” and when he said this, he fell asleep.

Responsorial Psalm – Psalms 97:1-2, 6-7, 9

R (1a and 9a) The Lord is king, the most high over all the earth.
or:
R Alleluia.

¹ The LORD is king; let the earth rejoice;
let the many islands be glad.
² Justice and judgment are the foundation of his throne.
R The Lord is king, the most high over all the earth.
or:
R Alleluia.

⁶ The heavens proclaim his justice,
and all peoples see his glory.
⁷ All gods are prostrate before him.
R The Lord is king, the most high over all the earth.
or:
R Alleluia.

⁹ You, O LORD, are the Most High over all the earth,
exalted far above all gods.
R The Lord is king, the most high over all the earth.
or:
R Alleluia.

2nd Reading – Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20

¹² I, John, heard a voice saying to me: “Behold, I am coming soon. I bring with me the recompense I will give to each
according to his deeds.

¹³ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

¹⁴ Blessed are they who wash their robes so as to have the right to the tree of life and enter the city through its gates.

¹⁶ “I, Jesus, sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the root and offspring of David, the bright morning star.”

¹⁷ The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” Let the hearer say, “Come.” Let the one who thirsts come forward, and the one who wants it receive the gift of life-giving water.

²⁰ The one who gives this testimony says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!

Alleluia – John 14:18

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
¹⁸ I will not leave you orphans, says the Lord.
I will come back to you, and your hearts will rejoice.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel – John 17:20-26

20 Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying: “Holy Father, I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,

²¹ so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.

²² And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one,

²³ I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me,
and that you loved them even as you loved me.

²⁴ Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

²⁵ Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me.

²⁶ I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.”

Homily

Recognition Christ in Our Midst; The Consolation of the Church; Results of Jesus’ Having Been Here
All of us know the sadness of good-byes. We have said them to our parents, our children,
our relatives, and our friends.

Every farewell seems a little death. At each parting there is a
wrenching and a loneliness – especially if it means separation for a considerable period of time.
Those who try to be close to Jesus felt on the feast of his Ascension, when we commemorate his
going to heaven.

Today, between the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost, after we have marked
Jesus’ leave taking from the disciples but before celebrating the coming of the Spirit, we speak
not of Jesus’ absence but of his presence, although in a different form.
The Gospel is taken from the end of Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper.

The prayer ends as it began – solemnly, intimately, in the hearing of friends, with many references to love, and filled with hope. In the first part of this prayer (vv. 1-8), Jesus prayed for himself, in the second part (vv. 9-19) for his disciples, and in this last part – today’s – for us and all believers.
It is called Jesus’ High-Priestly Prayer, because in it he consecrates his body and blood
for the sacrifice in which they are about to be offered and because in it he gives his blessings to
the Church that he is about to bring forth.

The end of the prayer differs from its beginning. What went before, Jesus had spoken to the disciples; what he is saying now is an intimate dialog with the Father, with the disciples being privileged to overhear. In this terrible time, Jesus didn’t lose faith in God or confidence in his people.

And his tender prayer was for his people’s unity. We needn’t be reminded for its need.
We often witness breakdowns of communication in families, enmity among members of the
same faith community dissension in civil society.

Jesus’ unity – one of personal relationship – is to overcome all such divisions, especially those within the fold. Jesus wants a unity like that between himself and the Father – a unity that preserves individuality but which is close and intimate. That union of the Father and the Son is our model. It is a unity in which people will love and serve each other because they love and serve him; it is heart speaking to heart. Its key is love.

Unless the Church has the unity willed by God, it can’t perform its essential mission; that
the world may believe (v. 21). That we may be one, as Jesus and the heavenly Father are one, as
Jesus prayed, Jesus has given all of us the glory the Father gave him (v. 22).

That consists, for one, in the cross, on which Jesus wasn’t so much crucified as glorified. Through suffering for God, we grow as in no other way. To carry Jesus’ cross for the Christian an honour and a glory. Like Jesus, we find our glory in doing not what we will, but what God wills.

When Christians preserve God’s unity in love that Jesus has given, we are the continuation of Christ as

mediator and revealer of God. We show the world that he was sent by God (v. 25, who alone is
perfectly righteous, will deal rightly with those who have accepted the revelation of God in
Christ.

And even as death approaches, he sounds a note of triumph that he shall live and, through
the Paraclete who is to come, will continue to make known God’s name. (v. 26).
One answer to Jesus’ prayer began with St Stephen. Stephen was one of the first seven
spiritual and prudent men chosen to be deacons, and to do what the first deacons had as their
reason for being: to distribute charity to the needy.

He’s celebrated as the Church’s first martyr.
The word “martyr” means literally “witness”; and Stephen was a lesson to all of us to stand for
what’s right and true – though our bearing witness is unlikely to be as hazardous as it was for
Stephen.

In witnessing to truth we should avoid being passive, lethargic, and indifferent; we
should, to the contrary, form ourselves into a zealous people, eager to proclaim justice.
Implicitly, Stephen’s prayer for the forgiveness of his infuriated audience attempts to
overcome to overcome the disunity between Stephen and them as well as between them and
God; forgiveness is an essential element for achieving unity.

Stephen saw beyond the faces of his audience distorted with rage; and he saw even beyond time, to the Son of Man standing at God’s right hand (vv. 55f.) – a position of power and authority. The Church reminds us of this today, the Sunday following the feast of the Ascension, because it is the first example in the Scriptures of a vision of the risen and ascended Jesus.

Stephen’s audience was no more pleased at hearing his mentioning the significant term
“Son of Man” – knowing its implication of the divine – than those who had heard Jesus use it.
Considering it blasphemy, they shouted in fury, covered their ears to hear no morn of it, rushed
him, dragged him out of the city, and stoned him to death (vv. 57f.)

None of this was an official act of Judaism, since in Roman times not even the Sanhedrin
had the power to put anyone to death. It was a lynching. The custom for such a lynch mob then
was to lead the condemned to a height and throw him off. If that didn’t kill him, they hurled
boulders on him until he died.

In Stephen’s case, it was ironic that the participants in their ugly activity laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul (v. 58), the future St Paul, who for his part concurred in the killing.

Stephen died very much as Jesus had. Both Jesus and Stephen were accused of blasphemy. Both were tried by a mob and a kangaroo court. Both were taken outside the Holy City to be killed.

Both died violent deaths. As Jesus had prayed to his heavenly Father to forgive his murderers, Stephen cried the same plea (v. 60). And both Jesus and Stephen at the last commended their spirits to God.

In the trials of our lives, which are less intense than those of Jesus and Stephen, we can
be consoled by the vision of John the Theologian in today’s section from the Book of Revelation.
It is our seventh and last reading in the liturgy of this year from this mysterious final book of the
Bible. This is the end of the book and the end of the Bible.

It has Jesus applying to himself the words used by God of Himself in the very beginning
of the Bible (Gen 1:8): “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (v. 13). We call something complete
when we say it goes “from a to z”.

To mean the same thing, the Hebrews used the first and last letters of their alphabet, “from alpha to taw”, and the Greeks, as here, “From alpha to omega”. It means that Jesus – and not the Torah, as the Jews had claimed – is complete in every way, timeless, and with full authority.

Those people fortune enough to receive the right of entry into the City of God, his
Church, his Church, are those who live through and in Jesus.

They have the right to the tree of life (v. 14) – a very ancient metaphor indicating that anyone eating the fruit of life would become like the gods, having eternal life. In ancient pagan myths, the gods and goddesses didn’t want human beings to become immortal, so they capriciously kept moving the tree of life so that no mortal could find it.

Here it brings us back to the beginning of the Bible with the tree in the
garden of Eden (Gen 2:9). In the New Testament, those who suffer in Christ have access to the
tree of life.John’s vision next puts into Jesus’ mouth two messianic prophecies that Jesus has
fulfilled.

He is, for one, the root and offspring of David’s son, but also his Lord. In Christ, the
King of kings, all hopes are realized. And John has Jesus speak of himself as “the bright morning
star”. The morning star is the herald of the day that chases away the night’s darkness.

For the Jews, it had the added meaning of symbolizing the “star” which Judaism saw as a sign of the
Messiah’s appearance (See Num 24:17). That is what St Mathew intended by his use of the star
that guided the magi to Jesus’ birthplace. Christ, the morning star, is the best and brightest of all
hopes; before him the night, of sin and death, flees. Jesus, who had called himself “the light of
the world” (Jn 8:12), is the conqueror of the world’s darkness.

This passage, and the entire Bible, ends fittingly with Jesus proclaiming that he is coming
soon (v. 20) – that is to say, in his Church. And John’s response is the warm Aramaic expression
recorded also by St Paul: Marana tha (1 Cor 16:22) – the most welcoming, “Come, Lord Jesus!”
– a prayer for the coming of Christ in glory.

Finished with the sadness of the good-bye to Jesus at his ascension, we pray, “Come,
Lord Jesus!” We pray that he will come soon in glory – but we pray also that he will come in our
trials to make into one all of our communities – our civic community, our local faith community,
our work community, our family community.

We pray that in the unjust ridicule we receive for advocating what is true and right and just – as for example, condemning abortion and euthanasia
– we shall stand tall. We pray that all of us will recognize that largesse make only networks, not
community; only sacrifice make community.

We pay to recognize that the catalyst that Jesus has given us for fostering and developing
unity is the Eucharist. To share the Eucharist is to share the hurts and the joys of the community.

And we pray for the awareness that unity goes hand in hand with Stephen’s kind of forgiveness.
To forgive is to reopen the lines of communication and thus foster genuine unity.