3rd Sunday of Easter 2024

The author of life you put to death. St. Peter’s words in the first reading are some of the most haunting ever spoken—they interpret the words of our Lord, This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. I want to note the order of operations there, men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. St. Thomas Aquinas writes that sin darkens the intellect, because sin is the darkness which is opposed to the light, and so when the will is given to the darkness of sin, the intellect becomes blinded by that darkness. Our Lord said if you love Me, you will obey My commandments and St. John echoes If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. Venerable Fulton Sheen said that if we do not do as we believe, we will begin to believe as we do. St. James writes faith without works is dead.

Our Lord has given us a religion of the correct application of the Law—we are to do the works of God with a glad heart. Obey, serve, work, love. These works are the medicine by which God heals the heart wounded by sin and renews the life that has been choked by darkness. Faith alone does not profit us, because the work of renewal is not accomplished—but similarly, the works alone do not profit us, because we make Pharisees of ourselves, and fare no better. The greatest commandment, Christ says, is to love God with all your being, and then to love your neighbor. The great commission is to go and make disciples, bringing the love of God to your neighbor. The great judgment, then, comes from the opposite: to reject the light of God, and to bring darkness and death to your neighbor.

Can I be patient and kind? Am I jealous or boastful? Do I tend toward arrogance or rudeness? Do I insist on my own way? Am I irritable or resentful? Do I enjoy when someone I dislike gets hurt? Am I resentful when someone succeeds where I did not? St. Paul’s words are not just a pleasant sentiment for wedding readings, but an examination of conscience—and a test of discipleship. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, if I give away all I have and deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I am nothing. The foremost call of Christ is to heroic virtue, to subject my passions to reason, reason to faith, and my very being to God. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Do I take the sacraments without love? Do I receive the Lord without giving myself to my neighbor? Do I neglect the opportunity to serve? Do I bless those who curse me and pray for those who persecute me? Do I see those before me as anything but an obstacle? O God, have mercy that these words might live in my heart. Make my heart burn while you speak to me. Help me crucify the sinful Adam, so that I might rise with You on the last day and not be condemned to death, for I put to death the author of life.