(Fifth Sunday
of Easter (A): This homily was given on May 14, 2017, at St. Pius X Church,
Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.
Read Acts 6: 1-7; 1Peter 2: 4-9; John 14: 1-12.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fifth Sunday of Easter 2017]
The Holy Father
was not pleased.
As many of you
probably heard …the other day the Pope was speaking to a group of students at
the Vatican, and he expressed his great displeasure at the nickname the United States
military has given to the most powerful non-nuclear explosive in its arsenal:
the “Mother Of All Bombs”—which was the weapon that was used against ISIS
terrorists in Afghanistan last month. He
said, “A mother gives life and this one gives death, and we call this device a
mother. What is going on?”
Since English
is not his first language, it’s understandable that the Holy Father isn’t
attuned to all our idioms and figures of speech, but what he is attuned to is the importance and the dignity of motherhood!
That’s why he
said what he said to those students.
We should also
be attuned to the importance and dignity of mother—and not just once a year, on
Mother’s Day! Many, of course, are not
so attuned. Let’s be honest about it, we
live in a society right now where motherhood is very often treated like it’s a
disease. That’s one reason why
contraception and abortion are so prevalent.
Well,
motherhood is not a disease! It’s a
gift—a gift without which none of us would be here right now. Yes, it’s true, no earthly mother is
perfect—and some of us have had an earthly mother who is (or who was) extremely
imperfect. But every one of us was blessed with a mother
who said yes to God and who cooperated with him to give us life.
And for that
fact alone, we can (and we should) be grateful.
Eternally grateful.
But even if
we’ve had a severely-flawed earthly mom, the good news is that at the same time
we’ve had (and do have) a heavenly Mother who is not flawed in any way
whatsoever—and her name is Mary. On this
Mother’s Day weekend we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Mary’s
first apparition to the three children in Fatima, Portugal: Francisco, Jacinta
and Lucia.
How appropriate
that is, since our Blessed Mother appeared to those three children for the sake
of all her children—including you and
me. She came to remind them—and us—to
pray (especially the Rosary), to repent, and to obey God in every situation of
life (which is basically the message she gives in every apparition).
Like every good
mother, she tells her children the same things over and over again—because
children usually need to hear the same things over and over again!
They usually
don’t “get it” the first time.
I think that
Mary would like our readings today, because, even though they’re not explicitly
about motherhood, they do point us towards certain qualities that we find in
good earthly mothers—qualities that Mary demonstrated perfectly in her own
life.
Take, for
example, our first reading from Acts, chapter 6. There we heard about the call of the very
first deacons. The English word “deacon”
comes from the Greek word for servant—“diakonos”—which I would say pretty
accurately describes what a good mother is to her family.
You young people,
how often do you say “thank you” to your mom for driving you to all your
appointments and activities? For cooking
for you, and cleaning up after you, and for giving up the things she wants to
do so that you can do the things you want to do?
Hopefully you say
“thank you” more than once a year on Mother’s Day!
In today’s
second reading St. Peter says that true believers offer “spiritual sacrifices”
to the heavenly Father through Jesus.
Good Christian mothers do that by living their vocations well, and by
offering up their sufferings for their children (remembering the lesson that
St. Paul gives us in Colossians 1: that offered-up suffering is like prayer, in that it draws down God’s blessings
into the world and into the lives of those we love).
Later on in
that second reading Peter uses the image of a “rock” in speaking of Jesus. Every good Christian mother helps her
children to build their lives on that rock:
the Rock” of Jesus Christ and his Gospel.
So, young
people, don’t complain that your mother makes you go to Mass every Sunday! You thank God you have a mother who cares
about you that much—a mother who makes sure that you have an encounter with
Jesus in word and in sacrament every weekend and every holy day!
She’s helping
you to build your life on a solid rock foundation!
And then we
have this gospel text from John 14, which begins with these words of Jesus: “Do
not let your hearts be troubled.” Here
we see our Lord at the Last Supper—just a few hours before his own horrific
passion and death—actually consoling his friends (his friends who would all, in
the very near future, abandon him in one way or another).
His focus,
incredibly, was on their suffering, their anxiety, their pain—not his own.
A good earthly
mother is like that, isn’t she? A good
mother might be in terrible physical or emotional pain herself, she might be
going through the worst trial of her entire life—it doesn’t matter. If one of her children needs her assistance,
if one of her children needs a word of encouragement or a message of hope, she
will do her best to provide it.
That’s why when
children are in really, really big trouble or are really, really hurting, they
will usually call for their mothers.
I’ve been told that even hardened criminals will do that.
In today’s
gospel Philip says to Jesus, “Show us the [heavenly] Father and that will be
enough for us.” Jesus reprimands Philip
immediately. He says, “Have I been with
you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” In other words, “Philip, if you want to know
what God the Father is like, all you have to do is look at me, God the
Son. My words and my actions will reveal
to you all that you need to know about the First Person of the Blessed
Trinity.”
Philip did not see in Jesus what he was
supposed to see in Jesus. That was his problem.
By the same
token, we sometimes do not see in our mothers what we’re supposed to see in
them—what Almighty God wants us to see in them.
We can very easily take for granted their love, their compassion, their
dedication, their service and their sacrifice.
May that
change—forever—for each and every one of us—on this Mother’s Day.
