June 2, 2019

7^th Sunday of Easter

“The Plea from the Heart of Christ”

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio

We tend to listen carefully to a person’s last words or his testament. I have had many occasions to be at the side of a dying person. Not one said, “You know, Father, my only regret is that I didn’t spend enough time at work. I wish I had put in more overtime!” At that moment, they prefer to speak about God, faith, family, friends—the most important things of life.

In today’s Gospel we are given a window into the intimacy of the Cenacle and an opportunity to listen to the final testament of the Lord Jesus, his prayer for his disciples at the Last Supper. There we hear a heartfelt and fervent prayer for unity.
 
Unity is one of the four marks of the Church which we profess in the Nicene Creed: “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.”
 
Many prayers of the liturgy remind us that unity is the effect of the receiving of Holy Communion and every Eucharistic Prayer contains a prayer for unity, and after the Our Father we implore the Lord, “Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church and graciously grant her peace and unity.” We might also recall the refrain of the Communion Hymn? “O may we all one bread, one body be, by this blest Sacrament of unity.”
 
While St. Luke reminds us Acts that the disciples were of “one heart and spirit,” he does not hide the fact that even in its earliest days, there were also divisions in the Church, even during the celebration of the Eucharist. He writes of how murmuring, jealousies and evil tongued persons damaged the Church’s unity.
 
This should not be surprising because where there is humanity, there is weakness and sin. There is discord within the Church just as there is discord in our families. But a disciple, keeping in mind, the desire of Christ, strives to be a person of hope, a person who cultivates unity. But this is not always easy.
 
How easy it is to become comfortable with our own group, shutting others out, being unwelcoming without even realizing it. How easy it is to think in our pride that my way is the best and only way. How easy it is to become intolerant of others.
 
Unity breaks down when we fall into complaining, criticizing, holding grudges, gossiping, making rash judgments or even the practice of “shooting the wounded.” I like the little rhyme of Archabbot Lambert Reilly that goes:

There is so much good in the worst of us
and so much bad in the best of us
that it behooves none of us
to talk about the rest of us!

If we want to bring in a saint’s advice, we might heed the words of St. Robert Bellarmine who said that the best way to cultivate unity is to patiently put up with one another’s defects. He said, “There is no one who has not his faults, and who is not in some way a burden to others, whether he be a superior, or a subject, an old man, or a young, a scholar or a dunce.”
 
When we possess the humility to admit our own limitations we pave the way to greater concord and unity in our church, our families and relationships. Let’s pray for that grace that we might do our part to realize this desire that comes from the Heart of Christ Himself!