24 April 2024, Wednesday of the 4th week of Easter
Acts 12:24-13:5; John 12:44-50
Homily
The texts of today's Mass are essentially about the Word. First, in the Gospel, Jesus says that He was sent by His Father to transmit a Word to humanity. He himself is the Word that the Father addresses to us, and in this single Word, the Father speaks in full, so that whoever receives Him receives the Father, and whoever sees Him sees the Father. He has come to bring light to the world. And Jesus explains what the Last Judgement will consist of. It will not be a judgement from outside, brought down by God on each person. No, it will simply be a confirmation of the state each person has reached by accepting or rejecting the Word. We place ourselves in the line of Life or Death, Light or Darkness, by accepting or not accepting the Word of God and by letting it transform our lives or not.
Reading the Book of Acts shows us how this Word transforms not only each person to whom it is addressed, but also the Church and Society. It is admirable to see how this Word, addressed by Jesus to a few disciples on the roads of Galilee and Judea, suddenly spreads like wildfire in the aftermath of his Resurrection. The first sentence of our first reading is surprising. In this text from Acts, Luke is not saying that the Christian community was growing and developing. He says that the Word grew and multiplied.
Every day, not only in the liturgy, but also through our personal readings, we come into contact with the Word of God. Let us be attentive so that this reading is not just an exercise, but a true contact with the Word, a real ‘reception’ of the Word. Then the Word will grow in us. Like the Baptist, we will diminish and the Word will grow in us, gradually transforming us in it. We will then be ever more transformed and conformed to the substantial Word, the Son of God. That is the goal of our Christian life and our monastic life.
Armand Veilleux