Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A

Speaking the truth, with love, is not easy. We can so easily go to one extreme

or the other. We can be blunt, “telling it the way it is” and upsetting or

antagonising people, or, to be nice and polite, we deny the truth and just want

to say “nice things” instead. Take the example of a teenage lad who has come

back from playing a football match and is watching TV. His brother enters,

stage left. He has a reputation for being as blunt as a spade. He tells him

straight: “It absolutely stinks in here”. Meanwhile, their sister, sitting in the

armchair, prefers to deny facts to prevent awkward situations: “Leave him

alone. There’s nothing wrong with his socks.” We need a response a bit more

somewhere in the middle. Their father walk in and uses a bit of humour to

lighten the situation: “Ee, lad, top marks for winning the smelly cheese

competition, but can we eat it a bit later?”

A similar approach needs to be taken with our faith, including with the moral

dimension that goes with our faith. In the second reading, St Peter first affirms

that we need to stand for the truth. He writes: “In your hearts honour Christ

the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks

you for a reason for the hope that is in you”. But then he adds, “yet do it with

gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are

slandered, those who revile your good behaviour in Christ may be put to

shame”. It’s in this approach where the Holy Spirit is most at work.

Meanwhile, it is the devil who likes to cause distortions, taking us away from

the middle road of virtue and heading into the extremes of bluntness or

deceptive so-called niceness.

In the Gospel, Christ tells the disciples that He will ask the Father to send the

Holy Spirit, and He gives the Holy Spirit the name of Helper. We will not be

left as orphans. Christ will still be with us, and we will have the Holy Spirit to

help us as well.

The Holy Spirit helps us in dealing with those two issues of truth and love, and

how we keep the two together. God loves us. But He loves us so much He

doesn’t want us to remain as we are but to grow. Part of the role of the Holy

Spirit is to shine a light on our lives and light up the areas of darkness. Guilt

can be a healthy thing. Without it we could do all sorts of wrong things and not

feel the tiniest bit of shame. But if it leads to despair, then that is the work of

the evil one. The Holy Spirit, both brings our sin to light, but is also the

Helper, the Consoler, who gives us grace for repentance and conversion; He

helps us to trust in God’s mercy, and not be afraid to present ourselves for

forgiveness. St John Paul II put it this way (in Dominum et Vivificantem 31 §

2):

“Conversion requires convincing of sin; it includes the interior judgement of

conscience, and this, being a proof of the action of the Spirit of truth in man’s

inmost being, becomes at the same time the start of a new grant of grace and

love: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ Thus in this ‘convincing concerning sin’ we

discover a double gift: the gift of the truth of conscience and the gift of the

certainty of redemption. The Spirit of truth is the Consoler.”

I think it’s just wonderful how God puts these two together so beautifully. He

reaches down to us, not to kick us when we’re down, but to extend His hand to

lift us up. The truth sets us free. The truth that we are in need of help, and the

truth that He can put us right again. The message of God is one of “Do not be

afraid” and “Behold I make all things new”. We show our wound to the doctor,

knowing that he will heal us, not strike us where we are vulnerable.

And so, one thing leads to another. Having experienced the love of the Lord,

we want to serve Him in love. We want to keep his commandments. In them,

we find life, because in them we find His life and we find Him. He knows

what life is like and what it is about, and in Him we find the life of the Holy

Spirit, who is able to work through us and transform us, and sometimes people

use the expression “divinize us”, make us more like God.

Our life can then be like that of the last verse of the psalm:

“Come and hear, all who fear God;

I will tell what he did for my soul.

Blest be God, who did not reject my prayer,

nor withhold from me his merciful love.”

In God, we are made whole and complete, and that speaks volumes when we

then witness to others.

Curious about exploring things further?  If you would like to ask further questions about the topics raised in these homilies (or maybe think it wasn’t explained too well!), please feel free to e-mail Fr Michael at stjoseph.thame@rcaob.org.uk