May 7, 2024 – Tuesday of the 6th week of Easter
Homily
At the end of yesterday’s Gospel, Jesus confided to His disciples that he had told them all those things, so that they would “remember” that he had told them. Remembering, or memory, is something very important in Christin life. At the very heart of Christian life, is the Eucharist, that we celebrate “in memory of “ Jesus, as he told us to do. It is also by keeping as constant a memory of Him as possible that we can lead a life of continuous prayer, which is the most important element of Christian life and of our monastic life.
In the ongoing struggle that is always fought in each one of our hearts between the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of lies, it is possible for us to be “winners”, if we keep alive that memory of Jesus, and most of all, if, like Benedict reminds us in his Rule, we prefer nothing to the love of Christ.
For us, all boils down to live either according to the Spirit of Jesus or according to what Jesus Himself calls the spirit of the world, which is the spirit of lies. Jesus says that the spirit of the world is wrong in his way of understanding sin, justice and condemnation. Indeed, sin does not consist only in the fact of not respecting a precept. It is rather a refusal to love. As for justice, it does not consist simply in a fair distribution of the material goods, but rather in a righteous life, assuming all the demands of love, like Jesus did. And the judgement or condemnation is not exercised by God. It is simply the absence of life and of love in which falls the one who cuts himself away from the love of God.
In the first reading, just like yesterday, we have the example of a pagan with a pure heart that allows the Truth of the Gospel to transform his life as soon as it preached to him. Yesterday, it was Lydia of Philippi. Today it is one of the guardians of the jail of the same city. Le us pay a particular attention to the joy that fills those who let themselves be penetrated by the message of the Spirit of Truth.