© 2020 HOLY FAMILY PARISH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
contact@holyfamilymh.ca
+1 403 527 6933
1451 Strachan Rd SE, Medicine Hat, AB
5th SUNDAY YEAR C ~ MAY 18, 2025

5th SUNDAY YEAR C ~ MAY 18, 2025

PEOPLE OF ACTION

Once a disciple was going to be given his last initiation by his master. Once he passes his last initiation he would be declared enlightened.

The disciple went to master and said, “I am ready. Please tell me what I must do for my last initiation.”

The master said, “You must go to the king, early in the morning. You must be the first visitor of the day, because the king always grants the wishes of the first visitor.

The king was wise; he took care of his people. So good that people forgot about it and years passed and nobody went to the king early in the morning to ask for anything.

Remember, after waking up as the sun rises, first thing the king does is to go into his garden for walk. So be there.”

The disciple followed the order. He didn’t take any chances and was at the king’s garden at 3 o’clock early in morning, waiting for the king.

As the sun was rising, the disciple saw the king come to the garden. The disciple went to the king and bowed down. The king said, “Do you need something? You can ask for anything and I will give it to you.”

The disciple came from a poor family and when the king said that he can ask for anything, great desires possessed him.

To be certain, the disciple asked again, “What do you mean by anything?”

The king replied, “I mean anything. You can ask for gold, a palace or even if you ask for my kingdom, I will give it to you.”

The poor disciple couldn’t think of just one thing. He thought that maybe asking for ten thousand gold coins will do, but just then he thought why only ten thousand, why not a hundred thousand coins.

The disciple’s mind constantly kept thinking of more and more things.

After waiting for a while, the king said, “It seems that you are not ready to ask, I will go for my morning walk, meanwhile you decide. When I return, whatsoever you ask will be given to you.”

For half an hour, he went on and on thinking.

When the king returned, the disciple said, “Sir, if you are so willing to give, I will ask for everything. All that you have – Your Kingdom. All your riches, your palaces – everything.”

Listening to this, the king fell on his knees, started praying to God, tears rolling down from his eyes – of great joy, ecstasy.

He was thanking God saying, “I have been waiting for such a man. How long have I waited. Finally, you heard my prayers. Now he has come, and I am free of all this nonsense. Thank you.!”

When the king was saying all these things to God, the young disciple was standing beside him and started to think, “What is the matter? Why is the king feeling so happy renouncing the kingdom, what am I getting into? If for thirty years he has been praying to leave this, then it’s not worthwhile at all. I am getting into unnecessary trouble.”

Disciple fell to his knees, touched the king’s feet and said, “Your majesty, I am a young man, I am a fool. Please excuse me. I don’t want anything. Your prayer to God has made me realize my mistake. Thank you. Please I don’t want anything. I want to go back to the forest to my master.”

The king tried to persuade him asking him to stay for while and look around, but the disciple still refused, saying, “I cannot stay here, not even for a single moment because my mind can betray me. An insight has happened. I am thankful to you.”

When the young disciple went back, he told the whole story to his master. His master said, “Your initiation is over. Now, nothing will ever make a slave of you. Now, you are alert, conscious, and free. You have passed. I’m Happy.”

We continue to reflect on our Easter stories which keep reminding us that our Lord and Saviour is with us and walks with us every day. Last Sunday we reflected on the attributes of the Good Shepherd who cares about his sheep and never loses any of them. The Lord being our Good Shepherd leads us to green pastures and anoints us with purist of oil because his mercy and love walks before us.  St. Maximus explores this mystery in this way “Christ is risen! He has burst open the gates of hell and let the dead go free; he has renewed the earth through the members of his Church now born again in baptism and has made it blossom afresh with men brought back to life. His Holy Spirit has unlocked the doors of heaven, which stand wide open to receive those who rise up from the earth. Because of Christ’s resurrection the thief ascends to paradise, the bodies of the blessed enter the holy city, and the dead are restored to the company of the living. There is an upward movement in the whole of creation, each element raising itself to something higher. We see hell restoring its victims to the upper regions, earth sending its buried dead to heaven, and heaven presenting the new arrivals to the Lord. In one and the same movement, our Savior’s passion raises men from the depths, lifts them up from the earth, and sets them in the heights”

Our Christian faith does not depend only on words but also on actions and we can see it through the lives of the apostles and early Christians in the Book of Acts of the Apostle. People were converting to Christian faith because they saw the actions or way of their living as Christian. St. Hilary reflects on the true meaning of Christianity rooted in the Holy Trinity in this way “We believe that the Word became flesh and that we receive his flesh in the Lord’s Supper. How then can we fail to believe that he really dwells within us? When he became man, he clothed himself in our flesh, uniting it to himself for ever. In the sacrament of his body, he gives us his own flesh, which he has united to his divinity. This is why we are all one, because the Father is in Christ, and Christ is in us. He is in us through his flesh, and we are in him. With him we form a unity which is in God. The manner of our indwelling in him through the sacrament of his body and blood is evident from the Lord’s own words: This world will see me no longer, but you shall see me. Because I live you shall live also, for I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you. If it had been a question of mere unity of will, why should he have given us this explanation of the steps by which it is achieved? He is in the Father by reason of his divine nature, we are in him by reason of his human birth, and he is in us through the mystery of the sacraments. This, surely, is what he wished us to believe; this is how he wanted us to understand the perfect unity that is achieved through our Mediator, who lives in the Father while we live in him, and who, while living in the Father, lives also in us. This is how we attain to unity with the Father. Christ is in very truth in the Father by his eternal generation; we are in very truth in Christ, and he likewise is in us. Christ himself bore witness to the reality of his unity when he said: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him. No one will be in Christ unless Christ himself has been in him; Christ will take to himself only the flesh of those who have received his flesh. He had already explained the mystery of this perfect unity when he said: As the living Father sent me and I draw life from the Father, so he who eats my flesh will draw life from me. We draw life from his flesh just as he draws life from the Father. Such comparisons aid our understanding, since we can grasp a point more easily when we have an analogy. The point is that Christ is the wellspring of our life. Since we who are in the flesh have Christ dwelling in us through his flesh, we shall draw life from him in the same way he draws life from the Father”.

St. James the Apostle strongly believed that our words are not enough to speak about our faith in the Lord, but actions are needed as well “What good is it, my brothers, and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?  So, faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith” (2:14-19).

The life of the desert fathers is amazing to reflect upon. They lived in desert meditating and praying. Their actions were more important than the words as we can see in the following story. An Egyptian monk was living in the suburbs of Constantinople: and when the Emperor Theodosius II passed that way, he left his train of courtiers and came unattended to the cell. The monk opened the door to his knock, and at once recognized that he was the emperor, but he received him as though he was only one of the imperial guards. When he had come in, they prayed together and sat down. The emperor began to ask him, ‘How are the hermits in Egypt?’ He answered, ‘They are all praying for your salvation.’ The emperor looked round the cell to see if he had any food and saw nothing except a basket with a little bread, and a flagon of water. The monk said to him, ‘Will you take a little to eat?’ He put the bread in front of him, and mixed oil and salt, and gave him that to eat and drink. The emperor said to him, ‘Do you know who I am?’ He said, ‘God knows who you are.’ The emperor said, ‘I am the Emperor Theodosius.’ The monk at once fell before him and did humble obeisance. The emperor said, ‘Blessed are you, for you have an untroubled life, without thought of the world. I tell you truly, I was born an emperor, and I have never enjoyed bread and water as I have today: I have eaten with real pleasure.’ He began to do honour to the monk, so the hermit went out, and fled back to Egypt.

St. Basil the Great says, Our Lord made a covenant with us through baptism to give us eternal life. There is in baptism an image both of death and of life, the water being the symbol of death, the Spirit giving the pledge of life. The association of water and the Spirit is explained by the twofold purpose for which baptism was instituted, namely, to destroy the sin in us so that it could never again give birth to death, and to enable us to live by the Spirit and so win the reward of holiness. The water into which the body enters as into a tomb symbolizes death; the Spirit instills into us his life-giving power, awakening our souls from the death of sin to the life that they had in the beginning. This then is what it means to be born again of water and the Spirit: we die in the water, and we come to life again through the Spirit.

To signify this death and to enlighten the baptized by transmitting to them knowledge of God, the great sacrament of baptism is administered by means of a triple immersion and the invocation of each of the three divine Persons. Whatever grace there is in the water comes not from its own nature but from the presence of the Spirit, since baptism is not a cleansing of the body, but a pledge made to God from a clear conscience. As a preparation for our life after the resurrection, our Lord tells us in the gospel how we should live here and now. He teaches us to be peaceable, long-suffering, undefiled by desire for pleasure, and detached from worldly wealth. In this way we can achieve, by our own free choice, the kind of life that will be natural in the world to come. Through the Holy Spirit we are restored to paradise, we ascend to the kingdom of heaven, and we are reinstated as adopted sons. Thanks to the Spirit we obtain the right to call God our Father, we become sharers in the grace of Christ, we are called children of light, blessing is showered upon us, both in this world and in the world to come. As we contemplate them even now, like a reflection in a mirror, it is as though we already possessed the good things our faith tells us that we shall one day enjoy. If this is the pledge, what will the perfection be? If these are the first fruits, what will the full harvest be?

The conclusion of the Gospel is everything for us this week “you should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”.  Jesus is delivering his farewell discourse while sitting at the dinning table with his disciples. He knows what is going to happen to him and to his disciples afterward. He is encouraging everyone to continue to follow what they have seen and heard from him. God the Father was always with him and has glorified him among all generations and protected him. Jesus’ instructions to his disciples and to us, show our Christian faith by actions not just by words. Holy Father Pope Francis gave a beautiful reflection on the Gospel. And I believe we must examine ourselves to see how our faith is doing and how we are witnessing his name to other people. “What an enormous responsibility the Lord gives us today! He tells us that the world will recognize the disciples of Jesus by the way they love one another. Love, in other words, is the Christian’s identity card, the only valid “document” identifying us as Christians. It is the only valid document. If this card expires and is not constantly renewed, we stop being witnesses of the Master. So, I ask you: Do you wish to say yes to Jesus’ invitation to be his disciples? Do you wish to be his faithful friends? The true friends of Jesus stand out essentially by the genuine love; not some “pie in the sky” love; no, it is a genuine love that shines forth in their way of life. Love is always shown in real actions. Those who are not real and genuine and who speak of love are like characters is a soap opera, some fake love story. Do you want to experience his love? Do you want this love: yes or no? Let us learn from him, for his words are a school of life, a school where we learn to love. This is a task which we must engage in every day: to learn how to love”. (Please read 1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

We must remember by baptism we become a member of the Holy Church but by actions we become true disciples of Jesus who for the sake of love died on the Cross so that we may have life and have it in abundance. Jesus wants us to be up on our feet! Think of the beautiful word Jesus said to the paralytic: “Arise!”. God has created us to be on our feet.  So, arise! God wants us up on our feet, ever on our feet! And that’s only through our actions to glorify his name.  Once Gandhi said, “I love Christianity but hate Christians because their actions are contrary to the Gospel”.

The desert fathers rightly said, ‘We become more humbled when we are tempted, because God, knowing our weakness, protects us. But if we boast of our own strength, he takes away his protection, and we are lost”.  Today we need to ask the Lord to give us strength to witness his name by actions so that people may know that we are his disciples.

St. Clement, bishop, and martyr has reminded everyone of us to understand that through our actions as Christians we can enjoy the unity of the Risen Christ because his death is our ransom and his rising from the dead has restored our life to himself. “Beloved, Jesus Christ is our salvation, he is the high priest through whom we present our offerings and the helper who supports us in our weakness. Through him our gaze penetrates the heights of heaven, and we see as in a mirror, the most holy face of God. Through Christ the eyes of our hearts are opened, and our weak and clouded understanding reaches up toward the light. Through him the Lord God willed that we should taste eternal knowledge, for Christ is the radiance of God’s glory, and as much greater than the angels as the name God has given him is superior to theirs. So then, my brothers, let us do battle with all our might under his unerring command. Think of the men serving under our military commanders. How well disciplined they are! How readily and submissively they carry out orders! Not everyone can be a prefect, a tribune, a centurion, or a captain of fifty, but each man in his own rank executes the orders of the emperor and the officers in command. The great cannot exist without those of humble condition, nor can those of humble condition exist without the great. Always it is the harmonious working together of its various parts that insures the well-being of the whole. Take our own body as an example: The head is helpless without the feet; and the feet can do nothing without the heart. Even our least important members are useful and necessary to the whole body, and all work together for its well-being in harmonious subordination. Let us, then, preserve the unity of the body that we form in Christ Jesus, and let everyone give his neighbor the deference to which his gifts entitle him. Let the strong care for the weak and the weak respect the strong. Let the wealthy assist the poor and the poor man thank God for giving him someone to supply his needs. The wise man should show his wisdom not by his eloquence but by good works; the humble man should not proclaim his own humility but leave others to do so; nor must the man who preserves his chastity ever boast of it but recognize that the ability to control his desires has been given him by another.

Are we the people of action?

Share

Other Sermons In This Series