2nd Sunday of Easter B - Homily 6

 Homily 6 - 2021

You may have noticed over the years that St John’s Gospel is so different from the other three. You may even have found his Gospel pretty heavy at times. Mark was the first to write a Gospel, and he focussed mainly on the actions of Jesus — his healings, particularly. Matthew and Luke borrowed heavily from the Gospel of Mark. Each in his separate way sought to insert into Mark’s action-packed story more, much more, of the teaching of Jesus. And those teachings of Jesus were concerned primarily with telling the first disciples, and us disciples in following generations, about how to live their lives, our lives, as Jesus himself did, geared to the practical task of co-operating with God in shaping the Kingdom of God on earth.

John wrote his Gospel some time after the other three. So he did not want to go over unnecessarily what the other three had already done satisfactorily enough. Towards the end of his Gospel he gave this explanation of his purpose: “There were many other signs that Jesus worked and the disciples saw, but they are not recorded in this book. These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name”.

So John’s Gospel is not so much about the details of life in the Kingdom. It is about teasing out in much greater detail than the other three did the deeper mystery of who Jesus is, namely, the Christ, the Son of God — and, as the Gospel reminds us, the Good Shepherd, the Light of the world, the Bread of life, Living Water, our Friend and so on. And the purpose of discovering more clearly just who Jesus is, is to relate to him personally, and in the process to come more alive.

Believing in Jesus needs to move well beyond knowing the catechism, even being familiar with the Gospels. Believing in Jesus is learning to trust him ever more deeply. And we learn to trust him by coming familiar with him and relating to him, person to person, in love. It is that personal love that motivates everything else we do. It is what makes all the practical teachings of the other Gospels possible, desirable and life-giving.

During the twenty centuries that the Church has been around, it has learnt much about how to relate to God and deepen our love. Basically it is what we call prayer. But we can pray for different purposes, and some ways seem to be more nourishing of the personal relationship than others.However we pray, we need to spend time with our God. As a book I read one time put it, we need to waste a lot of time with Jesus. And that is what our praying often feels like — but it’s much the same with any friendship. What seems at times like a waste of time is not so in fact. It is through the boring times, and particularly afterwards, that we come to learn so much about ourselves and about God.

Another thing about any friendship is that our knowledge of and love for the other keeps pace with our coming to know ourselves. And self-knowledge can feel at first quite painful and discouraging.

So usually to pray well and to keep at it, it can be helpful to have someone we trust and who may know a little more about it than we do to accompany us. There are also useful books available, too. Ask the priest.