The Sixth Sunday of Easter (2024)
“It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”
—John 15:15-17
More than fourteen hundred years ago, Benedict of Nursia helped to forever shape the future of Christianity in his reform of monastic life and spirituality. Not only did he become the abbot of twelve monasteries in central Italy, he left behind a rule of life for monks that remains a touchpoint for thousands of monks and nuns even today. One of the defining characteristics of this great saint was his balanced understanding of the human person and community dynamics. We see this at work in the third chapter of his Rule and his insistence that the abbot of the monastery call the community together whenever there was important business to discuss: “Let the Abbot call together the whole community and state the matter to be acted upon… The reason we have said that all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals to the younger what is best.”
In a sense, we see the same wisdom was at work in the First Reading for the Sixth Sunday of Easter.
Recall how in the Acts of the Apostles, Saint Luke presented that first generation of believers as living an almost idyllic existence, devoting themselves to the Apostles’ teachings, “and the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers… All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need” (2:42, 44-45). But this way of life was short-lived. After a short time, those first Christians faced persecution and wrestled with questions of inclusivity and what should be expected of the growing number non-Jewish believers. While this might seem like a small issue for us today, this all-important question threatened to tear the Church apart. Pope Francis spoke of this dynamic on Wednesday when he addressed the participants of the Assembly of Primates of the Anglican Communion who were gathered in Rome:
The Easter season brings us back to our origins through our reading of the Acts of the Apostles. Amid so many glorious pages that speak of faith and fraternity, courage in the face of persecution, the joyful spread of the Gospel and its opening to the Gentiles, the sacred author does not conceal moments of tension and misunderstanding, often born of the frailty of the disciples, or different approaches to the relationship with past tradition… We sometimes forget that disagreements also marked the first Christian community, those who had known the Lord and had encountered him as risen from the dead.
So, what did the leaders of the Church do?
They brought together members with different perspectives and values, prayed, debated, and listened to one another. Together they discerned how the Holy Spirit was at work in the Church—just as Jesus had promised it would be.
And so, rather than closing ranks and opting to exclude those who might not comfortably fit within the community, the Church’s first leaders imagined a new way forward and began to welcome Gentiles into the community of believers. (This Sunday’s story of Peter and Cornelius the centurion is an important early example of this inclusivity.) Humbly recognizing both their own limitations and opportunities before them, the leaders looked beyond the enclosed circle of the original believers to welcome those who many believed couldn’t or shouldn’t be included within the Church.
This willingness to “look beyond the boundaries” was held up as the ideal for the Church by Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in 2013. In a speech delivered during the “general congregations” preceding the conclave during which he was elected pope, he reflected: “Evangelizing pre-supposes a desire in the Church to come out of herself. The Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also in the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance, and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery.” As Pope Francis, Bergoglio, he has continued to call Christians to move “beyond the boundaries” in his sermons and writings. Here, we turn again to his address to the Anglican Primates:
“We are called to pray and to listen to one another, seeking to understand each other’s concerns and asking ourselves, before enquiring of others, whether we have been docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, or prey to our own personal or group opinions. Surely, the divine way of seeing things will never be one of division, separation, or the interruption of dialogue. Rather, God’s way leads us to cling ever more fervently to the Lord Jesus, for only in communion with him will we find full communion with one another… It would be a scandal if, due to our divisions, we did not fulfil our common vocation to make Christ known. If, on the other hand, beyond our respective visions, we are able to bear witness to Christ with humility and love, he will be the one to bring us closer to one another. I repeat: ‘Only a love that becomes gratuitous service, only the love that Jesus taught and embodied, will bring separated Christians closer to one another. Only that love, which does not appeal to the past in order to remain aloof or to point a finger, only that love which in God’s name puts our brothers and sisters before the ironclad defense of our own religious structures, only that love will unite us. First our brothers and sisters, the structures later.’”*
In the end, what’s at stake in all of this is the fundamental mission of the Church: to proclaim and live the love of God through acts of service and to love one another after the example of Jesus. Like Benedict’s monks and the Apostles, each of us is also called to do our part in realizing this mission, but we are also called to reach across the boundaries—whatever form they might take—and invite others to join us in living out this mission.
Grant, almighty God,
that we may celebrate with heartfelt devotion these days of joy,
which we keep in honor of the risen Lord,
and that what we relive in remembrance
we may always hold to in what we do.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter
*Here, Pope Francis quotes his own homily from Second Vespers for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25, 2024)
