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Gospel Reading for April 29, 2024 – John 14: 21-26
RESOLUTE
Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him, “Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.
“I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name — he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”
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“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”
As the saying goes, “actions speak louder than words.” Take notice that at every Easter Sunday Mass, we renew our baptismal promises which our parents did for us when we were infants, or adults who were baptized later in life did at their baptism. The Renewal of Baptismal Promises start with, “Do you reject Satan? And all his works? And all his empty promises?” To which we respond, “I do.” Only then, is it followed by our creed, our belief in God, the Son and the Holy Spirit and our other church tenets. The heirarchy of questions seem to show that if we are to profess our belief in God, we should first be RESOLUTE to reject Satan and all forms of evil. Otherwise, how can we claim to love God and let Satan into our lives? They are OPPOSITES. How can Jesus and the Father and the Spirit make their dwelling in us if we are occupied by evil? The main reason why the Son of God became man was to rescue us from Satan and to reclaim God’s possession of us.
When we were children, our religion teacher showed us a picture of an angel at the right side of a child, and a devil at the left side. The angel was crying, while the devil was very happy, because the child was doing something bad. Whoever thought of making such illustration was very successful in making the child understand that good and evil exists in the world, and since the angel represents God, it is God who will be affected if we do bad. It would be good for parents to make the child understand that choosing to do evil will destroy not only ourselves but others too, a sort of collateral damage. We do good not to make God happy, but we do good so we may live a protected and fruitful life as God our Creator meant us to have because we are destined for eternal life.
Lord Jesus, may we always show our love for God by the lives we lead!
