7th Sunday of Easter Year

Acts 1:15-17, 20a, 20c-26; 1 John 4: 11-16 and John 17:11b-19

 “Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed, saying, “ Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one”(John 17:11b).

Today we march into the last but one Sunday of Easter and the last Sunday before Pentecost. There is no better day to read the Gospel passage where, our Lord Jesus Christ was seen praying to God the Father in a very exceptional way. This is traditionally known as the priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ. The highlight of his prayer was the need for his disciples (which includes all of us) to be one as he is one with the Father. “

But why was that supplication very important to our Lord Jesus Christ? Why was he wishing that they all be one? We need to note that Jesus was preparing his disciples for the Post Ascension or Pre- Pentecost periods of evangelization and demands of discipleship so it is relevant that he considers what will become of the Disciples and the Church after Jesus’ Ascension to the Father? Today’s readings are in this sense very relevant to us today who presently live in a broken world, plague with wars, and all kinds of divisions,

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

                                                 Acts 10: 25-26.34, 44-48; I jn 4:7-10; Jn 15:9-17

As we launch into the Sixth Sunday of Easter, our Lord began his exhortation in the Gospel passage, with the commandment to love and ended with that. We must not therefore take it lightly. Hence we are called upon to attend and be attentive to the Lord’s command that we must love one another as he loved us. Love is actually the fundamental phenomenon that drives the Christian life. Hence without love there will definitely be no Christianity. The message today is clear, we must love and not hate just as God continuously and continually love us.

It must be very flattering to hear that we are ‘chosen’, especially when we have Jesus tell us that He, personally, chose us and it was not us choosing Him.  Well, maybe after that first blush, a certain concern enters our mind.  We begin to realize that, along with the joy of being chosen, there also comes with it a certain degree of responsibility.  For some of us, following Christ becomes too difficult a choice to make.  We’re just too caught up in the world, the flesh and the devil and a tension develops between what we know is right and what we are doing with our lives.  Instead of becoming