7th Sunday of Easter 2022
Acts 7:55-60; Apocalypse 22:12-14, 16-17, 20; John 17:20-26
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, which has been restored over the last few years by the return of the Solemnity of Ascension to its rightful place on a Thursday, may seem like an opportunity to mark time between Ascension and Pentecost. It shouldn’t.
Rather, it is an important opportunity for us to do what the original disciples were doing at this time. What were they doing? If anyone tries to tell you that they were cowering in fear, knock them down, pummel them, and sit on their heads. That comes, as I have said before, of misinterpreting next Sunday’s Gospel as if it referred to an event of Pentecost, whereas it clearly speaks of Easter Sunday evening, when the Risen Christ appeared in the Upper Room.
So I ask again: what were the disciples doing? We discover that from the Gospel of Ascension Thursday and the First Reading of Pentecost Sunday. They were doing what the Lord told them at His Ascension, which was to await, and prepare for, the descent of the Holy Spirit.
In his Gospel, Luke tells us that, from the mountain of the Ascension, the disciples “went back to Jerusalem full of joy, and they were continually in the Temple praising God”. In his Acts of the Apostles, the same writer informs us that, when not in the Temple, they were gathered in the Upper Room with Our Lady, with other women, and with Jesus’ relatives, praying earnestly for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
That is exactly what we should be doing during these days. We should be full of joy, we should be praising God, and we should be praying with Our Lady and with the whole Church, on earth, in purgatory, and in heaven, for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We are still in Mary’s month of May, and even if we were not, we would still be able to count on her prayers, as she is the mother and model of the Church, with which she prays today as she prayed with the infant Church.
To help us in our time of waiting and preparation, the Church gives us today a mixed bag of readings. From the Acts of the Apostles, we hear of the martyrdom of Stephen, a post-Pentecost event. Notice how his persecutors “stopped their ears with their hands”: they were not willing to listen to the words which the Spirit offered them through Stephen. We, on the other hand, must have listening ears and listening hearts, eager to receive what the Spirit is saying to us.
St. Luke is keen to draw parallels between the martyrdom of Stephen and the death of his Lord. Stephen speaks of Jesus as the Son of Man, a title which Jesus had used of Himself. As did the dying Jesus, so the dying Stephen prays the psalm “Into your hands I commend my spirit”, with one immensely significant difference: Stephen addresses the prayer to Jesus, thus identifying Him with God. Finally, he paraphrases Jesus’ prayer for the forgiveness of His murderers. We too are invited to align our lives ever more closely with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.
Next, we hear the conclusion of the Apocalypse, as “the Spirit and the Bride (ie the Church)” unite to pray for the return of Christ in glory, while at the same time inviting all people to come to Him. The Bible ends, apart from a final blessing, with the prayer “Come, Lord Jesus” a prayer which we should make our own.
Finally, our Gospel passage is drawn from the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, as it is known, which John sets in the context of the Last Supper. We have here an intense prayer for the unity of believers with and in one another, and with and in Jesus and His Father, a unity which is the gift and the life of the Holy Spirit.
So far from being a period of marking time, this is a call to intense prayer. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
