The entrance antiphon for today’s Mass reminds us of the significance of Friday: “By your blood, O Lord, you have redeemed us. . .” The Church provides us with a reminder, even as we celebrate the Easter Season, of the fact that on a Friday, Jesus died for us. The communion antiphon for today is even more explicit: “Christ our Lord was put to death for our sins. . .”
In the first reading for today we are still in Jerusalem with our ancestors in the Faith who are undergoing their own personal passion, persecution at the hands of the Sanhedrin. But now they have an unexpected defender, Gamaliel. The Sanhedrin had a strange way of accepting Gamaliel’s advice. It had the apostles flogged and forbade them to preach Jesus before letting them go. Needless to say, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus.
It helps us to understand these Easter Season gospel passages by recalling that John’s Gospel is primarily a final instruction for new converts on the sacramental life of the Church. In previous readings this week we have heard Jesus teaching on the nature of baptismal rebirth through water and the Holy Spirit. Now we come to a kind of prologue to Christ’s teaching on the Eucharist, and we see Jesus at his pedagogical best. He teaches by doing; he speaks through a spectacular sign. This sign that is misunderstood at first, for Jesus was not interested in accept the crown the people wanted to give him. Rather it is a sign of a much deeper need all people have; namely, union with him through bread and wine become his Body and his Blood.
It is obvious that the best way for us to share the glory of the resurrection is by loving participation in the sacrament which today’s miracle prefigured. It is the Eucharist that makes present for us here and now the entire life of Jesus, his preaching, his miracles, and above all, his passion, death and resurrection.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator