May 21 – Homily – Fr Angelo: We are Not Orphans, But Witnesses

 

Today's Gospel links love and obedience, and this is fingernails on chalkboard, Fr. Angelo tells us, to the modern world enamoured with rights without obligations and love without commitment. The words of Jesus in the Gospel: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments."
We live in the days of the triumph of the autonomous self. It is our freedom, choice, identification, perspectives, ideologies, etc. that matter, and anyone that dissents must be shouted down and silenced, leading to a perpetual state of outrage and activism. But at the same time, the world is now trying to tell us what we much say, such as the proliferation of pronouns. This progression from "non-binary" gender to gender "fluidity" is rendering langauge useless and leading to social chaos.
And, as Father points out, people cannot tolerate chaos, and if society is not ordered by rational people acting in a rational way, it will be imposed by irrational people by violence. We are seeing the start of this reaction.
But be of good cheer, as Jesus says, for He has already overcome the world. We do not need to overcome it, but only testify to His victory as witnesses, i.e., martyrs. It is one thing to be angry at evil in the world, but do not be angry when you pay the price for belonging to Christ. We are in a real war between good and evil, and the most powerful weapon is the Word of God. But this does not mean we escape suffering, just as it did not for Jesus. He comes to us through the cross when we are on the cross. We fight as exiles in a strange land, but we do not fight alone in the "long defeat" which is this world.
Let us fight as Christians, loving and not depersonalizing those who put themselves against Christ. God loves them too, and they are to be the objects of our love as we are of their hate.
Father tells us that the truth will set us free, but it first will make us miserable by exposing our own ideologies and conceits. This will, in the end, make us free to follow what is real and true, and remind us that there is one we must and will answer to in the end. And He has not left us orphans, so let us be His martyrs.
Ave Maria!

Mass: Sunday 6th Week of Easter - Solemnity
Readings: 
1st: act 8:5-8, 14-17
Resp: psa 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20
2nd: 1pe 3:15-18
Gsp: joh 14:15-21