Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025. Gospel of St. John 14:23-29. Theme: The Gift of Divine Indwelling
In today’s Gospel we read part of the final conversation that Jesus had with His Apostles at the Last Supper just a short time before He was arrested and began His Passion. The Church always treasured these parting words of Christ because they form what we might call His last will and testament. Knowing that His death was imminent, He took time to prepare the Apostles for the difficulties that lay ahead and to help them face the crisis of faith that He knew would soon be upon them.
Now we can imagine that as Jesus looked into the faces of His closest companions His heart was overcome with deep compassion. We can tell this from the tender way He spoke and from all of the assurances that He gave them. He knew that they would soon have to figure out what life was going to be like without Him physically present. He was well aware that fear would grip them and that confusion would engulf them, and so He promised them - and by extension promised us - three things to help navigate through any troubles that may come into our lives. These are the grace of what we call the Divine Indwelling, the advocacy of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of interior peace. Together these three things really form but one packaged gift.
In speaking about peace Jesus said, “Not as the world gives do I give it to you.” So, what did he mean by saying, “not as the world gives…” ? Well, first of all, it helps to know that whenever the Bible uses the phrase “the world” it means “a way of thinking and living that is not in harmony with God”. The way “the world” offers peace is by focusing on things outside of ourselves that seem to promise security and happiness. such as wealth and possessions, physical beauty and good health, professional success and social popularity. But these things in and of themselves are transitory, unstable, undependable. Like the flowers of a field they are here today and then gone tomorrow. And most importantly, these things cannot reach deep down inside the human person to deal with the wounds that reside there. They cannot soothe the disturbances within us that cry out for the healing balm of Christ’s peace. If they could, then the power-brokers and celebrities of society would be among the most peace-filled and happiest people on planet Earth! And yet we hear of their broken selves, their revolving-door relationships and their sad tragedies almost daily.
But the peace that Jesus offers is unique and unlike any other because it’s something that only God can give us. Its origin is in what we call the Divine Indwelling, which means that the Persons of the Blessed Trinity come to make their dwelling within us by grace. Jesus said this quite clearly in today’s Gospel. And this great and wonderful mystery of God-living-within-us is also taught throughout the New Testament. It's amazing! It means that for us Christians, God is not some impersonal Supreme Being who lives far away from us up in the vast heavens. Nor is He some kind of detached God who looks down at us as we try our best to figure out how to live our lives. Rather, He’s as close as close can possibly be, by making His dwelling place right within us! This is not simply a matter of wishful thinking nor of poetic religious imagery but it’s the truth. By grace we become living temples of God, living shrines of His Divine Presence! Imagine that! Now this doesn’t take away our struggles nor free us from difficulties, but it enables us to go through them with inner serenity and with the confident assurance that all will be well. And this is why it is called the peace that the world cannot give.
However, it’s not enough to simply know that the Living God dwells within us. We have to deepen our awareness of this reality which in turn deepens our capacity to receive and benefit from the gift of Christ’s peace. For this reason the saints tell us that personal prayer is so very important and by this they don’t mean just reciting memorized words, which have their place in our spiritual lives, but it's not what they mean. They mean that we need to take time out, time away from our daily schedule, even if it’s just 5 minutes, and spend it in quiet solitude, alone with the God Who dwells within us. This is a time for prayer from the heart, for using our own words or even for praying without words and simply with our thoughts, as we look inside ourselves, so to speak, and get in touch with this Great Mystery dwelling within us. And the saints tell us that from time to time the Lord will bless us by allowing His Divine Presence to be tangibly felt within us so as to boost our faith, increase our hope and deepen our love and keep us going, so to speak. This is a great grace, a supernatural gift that no one and nothing can take away from us as long as, like we just heard Jesus tell us, we strive to be faithful in loving Him by cherishing His word and doing our best to live it in our daily lives.
None of us know what lays ahead in the trajectory of our lives. But each one of us can be reasonably sure that we will have to face one crisis or another. However, through it all if we remain faithful to God then He will remain within us. We have Christ’s solemn word about this!. And so we don’t allow our hearts to become troubled over the present nor fearful of the future because we trust that this precious promise of Christ remains as valid and as powerful for us today as it was when He first spoke it to His Apostles two thousand years ago at the Last Supper.
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