‘Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid’
May 25, 2025 – Sixth Sunday of Easter
Readings: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Psalm 67, R: O God, let all the nations praise you!; Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23; Gospel – John 14: 23-29
Today’s Gospel reminds us of three graces for a life of fruitful discipleship. First is the intimacy between love and obedience. Second is the promise of the Holy Spirit. Third is the gift of peace.
“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” (cf. John 14: 23-29)
The Lord very clearly defined love as best expressed in obedience. His own life and mission were defined by his loving obedience to the Father as we witnessed in his offering in the Agony in the Garden: “Not my will, but your will be done.” (cf. Luke 22: 42)
This described his own experience of how his loving obedience that led him to his perfect sacrifice on the Cross blessed him with his Father’s perfect love through his raising the Lord from the dead.
Thus, it is with confidence that the Lord assured us that loving obedience will bless us, too, with the Father’s love and more—“…we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”
This is one of the most vivid descriptions of how loving obedience brings us into a very intimate relationship with the Father and the Son. They will come to us and make their dwelling with us.
The Filipino word that captures this intimacy is “manahan,” a dwelling that is gentle and constant, affective and solidly stable.
The promise of the Holy Spirit completes the Trinitarian nature of our relationship with God. The Lord again clearly defined what the Holy Spirit will do, “teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”
The Holy Spirit will teach us the fullness of the definitive revelation of God in the Cross and Resurrection of the Lord. It will lead us to a deeper knowledge of this revelation.
It is important to point out that knowledge is an active endeavor. To know is to enter a relationship with what or who one is knowing.
For example, in the Ignatian graces to pray for in the Second Week of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, he prescribed to pray that we may see or know the Lord more, love him more, and follow him more.
Entry
It begins with knowing the Lord, flows into loving him, and develops into following him. Knowing is the entry into this relationship of love that bears fruit into becoming a follower or disciple of the Lord.
This is the gift of the Holy Spirit, deepening our personal relationship with the Lord through knowing him more.
Furthermore, the Holy Spirit will remind us, help us remember. Recall how the Risen Lord reminded the two disciples on the road to Emmaus about everything that was written about him.
This resulted in the renewal of their inspiration as disciples. “They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24: 32)
What the Lord did to these two disciples, he continues to do to us through the Holy Spirit. The great gift is the awesome grace of remembering and keeping alive in our hearts and in our life everything the Lord told us.
All this gives us a radical shift in our life, a paradigm shift that came with the Lord’s promise: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”
This peace came at a great price that gave us the greatest prize, the perfect sacrifice on the Cross and the perfect reward in the Resurrection. It is from the Resurrection, as the final word of our faith from which came the peace that only the Lord could give.
The Risen Lord constantly reminded us of this. His first words to the women after he was raised were, “Do not be afraid.”
His greeting to his disciples the first time he appeared to them as a group was “peace be with you.”
To proclaim the Lord’s Resurrection is front, center and core to the church’s mission and to our mission as followers of the Lord, as Christians.
What may seem like an abstruse Gospel passage this Sunday describes and defines to us the simplicity and depth of our life as followers of the Lord.
Loving obedience, an ever-deepening knowledge of the Lord through learning and remembering and finding our peace in him, give us the fullness of a life lived as followers of the Lord, as friends of and in the Lord.
