5^th Sunday of Easter 2002

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. John 14:6

As the Church draws near to the Feast of the Ascension, the sacred liturgy prepares for that feast, and its meaning for our lives, the feast which commemorates the event in which Jesus in one true sense left this world in a definitive way, but in another true sense remains always with His Church, but in a very different and even more wonderful way, till He returns in Glory one day to complete His work of salvation. On the feast day of His Ascension we will hear the words of the Angels spoken to the Apostles who saw Jesus ascend from this earth:

"Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven."

Yes Jesus will one day return, in glory, bodily, historically, to bring man and his history to its final judgment. He is no longer with us in the way he was with the Church until that day, as a visible, tangible presence in their midst, as a visible part of human history, daily life. Yet he truly remains with His Church nonetheless, invisibly, through the Spirit whom He sends and through whom He acts in our midst. Matthew records his promise as the very last words of his Gospel, And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the world. Amen. He has not left us orphans, as he himself promised in John 14:18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. So in one sense Jesus is no longer present, visibly, tangibly within history, but in another equally true sense he remains with His Church always, invisibly, through his powerful activity in the Spirit, by which he sustains and builds up His Church through the ages in preparation for the final kingdom which will he will establish at the end of time.

The Church and her children believe in Jesus, as he asked them to believe in Him in today's Gospel: "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me." These words were spoken after the last supper, just before he was to go forth to his passion and death. Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. Jesus knew their hearts would be profoundly troubled that night, and that their faith would be tested, and so he says simply, don't let the scandal of my death shake your faith, just put your faith in me, and in the end you will be filled with joy. He promises them that their faith will be tested, but also rewarded in the end, if they hold on believe in God, believe also in me. Faith is the key to the recovery of their hearts and inner peace, faith in Him who promises that he is going ahead of them; he says to them: I go [to] prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. He does not promise them an untroubled heart in this world, but if they survive the scandal of his death and the threats from the world with their faith in Him intact, they will find peace in the Kingdom he goes to prepare for them.

These words are recalled by the Church on the Ascension each year because they illuminate the Christian life in every age. Jesus knew his disciples faith would not only be tested by the scandal of his passion and death, which they could not understand at the time, but that the faith of his disciples would be tested down through the ages by all kinds of scandals and evils, and not just the scandals and evils in the world, but in the Church itself. He warned these same Apostles on the same night he promised them paradise, that Satan would attack his church, try to destroy it by destroying the faith of its children. At one point Jesus says flat out to His apostles: There will be scandals, meaning scandals in the Church itself, and adds Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come! And he speaks here those terrible words: it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

The other day a well intentioned but mistaken TV commentator said that if the present scandals in the Church are not immediately corrected, it can close its doors. It's a reasonable conclusion, but it does not take into account the faith of God's people. The Church has suffered and survived the most horrible scandals through the ages, and the decadent Popes and decadent Cardinals of the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance remind us to what depths even the highest leaders of the Church can sink. But the faith of the Church and the faith of the true believers survives, and even grows through these painful challenges. Faith, true faith, has its foundation not in man, but in God: Believe in God and Believe in me. In our Creed we state that we also must believe in the Church: We believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. But that belief is based upon our more fundamental faith in Jesus, who established the Church, who preserves the Church, sanctifies and rules the Church through His Spirit, and through the institutions that He Himself has established. The men may fail in their personal fidelity to their Master, like us all, but the Lord and His Spirit cannot be shut out from men through their personal failures. The faith of the Church, upon which our personal faith is built, is guaranteed to survive; the Church and her fundamental institutions are guaranteed to survive until the end of time, not by their human office holders, but by the Lord and His Spirit.

Jesus through the voice of His Vicar on earth last week, and through the Gospel today says to all Christ's disciples, "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me." The Church is being purified these days; it's like a guaranteed operation, painful to go through, but the patient is healthier as a result. Unchastity is a problem in the whole Church, the unchastity of contraception in marriage, the unchastity of pre-marital sex among the young, the unchastity of active homosexuality, and the unchastity of pedophilia, all of which have compromised the chastity of the Church as a whole, including the consecrated chastity of her clergy. The purification begins with the worst form of unchastity, the criminal form, but the purification cannot and must not stop there. This is a call not only to the Bishops and clergy to examine their consciences, but to the whole Church, to see how far we have departed from the norms of purity and chastity due tom our embracing of the secular world and its morality.

This examination and purification will be painful just as the present scandals are painful, but the Lord is using this pain to purify His Church at the beginning of the 3^rd Millennium. Only a Church that is remade in the image of its master can serve for the salvation of the world, and only a chaste Church will be able to help save an age where unchastity threatens the very survival of human society. The Pope has been saying this for years. Maybe his message will be listened to in this crisis the Church faces today.