THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Year A - 4 May
Psalter: 3rd week
Lectionary: Acts 2,14a.22-33; Ps 15; 1Pt 1,17-21; Luke 24,13-35
They recognized him by the bread given
They held him back, saying: "Stay with us, because it is evening and the day is about to end." And he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them he took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him; but he disappeared from their sight.
«Stay with us»: He who seeks wants to be sought. Our desire for friendship desires to be with Him. If Jesus remains with us, the darkness of the night disappears; with Him we are always at home. God's dwelling with us is one of the expressions that best allow us to grasp the meaning of the Eucharist. Jesus had promised that with the Father he would make his home among us. This is why He came in to dwell with them. The book of Revelation states: «I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears and opens the door for me, I will come to him and dine with him, and he with me." The broken bread of the Eucharist is his dwelling among us and ours in him.
4th SUNDAY OF EASTER
Year A - 11 May
Psalter: 4th week
Lectionary: Acts 2,14a.36-41; Ps 22; 1Pt 2,20b-25; John 10,1-10
I am the door of the sheep
«Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up from another place, is a thief and a robber. But he who enters through the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The doorkeeper opens the door to him, and the sheep listen to his voice, and he calls his sheep by name and leads them out."
The verbs in this passage are suggestive: “Enter” indicates communion; "listening" presupposes adherence to faith; "leading" outlines the safety of the guide; "walking" is company, life is not solitude but light, it is proceeding together with Someone; "knowing", this verb indicates the summit of total abandonment in faith. Our life is so estranged that even God seems like a stranger. We listen to the strangest voices, but not those of conscience. We are seduced by any merchant who wants to buy us and not by Him who loves us with eternal love.
V SUNDAY OF EASTER
Year A - 18 May
Psalter: I sep.
Lectionary: Acts 6,1-7; Ps 32; 1Pt 2,4-9; John 14,1-12
I am the way, the truth and the life
Thomas said to him: «Lord, we do not know where you are going; How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him: «I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me you would have known my Father too; and from now on you know him, and have seen him."
The disturbance is overcome by the knowledge of the truth which helps us to understand how Jesus' departure seals the completion of his work. With his "going away" Jesus manifests himself as the way, the truth and the life: the way to reach communion with God, who is the truth about the world and the fullness of man's life. If before Jesus was with us now he is in us, through faith, prayer, love and the gift of the Spirit. This is the style of his new presence, which realizes the new and great promise of the alliance. No one is so lost that he doesn't know where to go. Jesus replies to us that knowing him is "the way" that leads to God, who is our Father and us his children.
6th EASTER SUNDAY
Year A – 25 May
Psalter: 2nd week
Lectionary: Acts 8,5-8.14-17; Ps 65; 1Pt 3,15-18; John 14,15-21
I will send another comforter
«If you love me, you will keep my commandments; and I will pray to the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees nor knows him. You know him, because he dwells with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come back to you.
Loving Jesus, the Lord, is the center of Christianity and the fulfillment of the precept: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength". Now the disciples are able to love him. They saw how he loves them with all his heart, with all his soul and with all his strength: he became their servant and gave his life for them. Even if they abandoned and betrayed him. Jesus is faithful to us and he loves us with an eternal love. An orphan is a person deprived of what is naturally due to him. Being an orphan is not only an experience of abandonment, but it is also bewilderment, a loss of identity. Jesus does not leave us orphans, lost.