FRIDAY, SIXTH WEEK OF EASTER
Acts 18:9-18
Psalm 47:2-23.4-5.6-7
John 16:20-23
Very often, we always associate prayer with speaking to God, telling God our problems, but prayer can also be a time of listening to God speak to us. In prayer, listening can be more difficult than speaking. We can always be in control of what we say to God but not in control of what God has to, and may want to say to us. In prayer, we have to dispose ourselves, open ourselves up, to what the Lord wants to say to us; this is the attitude of the little Samuel who eventually prayed, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening’. In our first reading today, we hear of how the Lord spoke to Paul in prayer at a vulnerable and difficult moment in his life. In speaking to Paul, God's choice of word was so reassuring; ‘Do not be afraid to speak out, nor allow yourself to be silenced. I am with you. I have so many people on my side in this city that no one will even attempt to hurt you’. The Lord’s word to us in prayer will always have some reassuring and encouraging tone to us if only we will listen to him talk to us and be the ones talking all through. He says to each one of us, 'I am with you’. Even when he speaks a challenging word to us, he always says to us, ‘I am with you’. We will always hear these words from the Lord if we listen carefully and keenly to him. In the gospel reading, Jesus speaks such reassuring words to his disciples. On the eve of his death, he does not try to hide the naked reality of what is about to unfold for his disciples; 'You will be weeping and wailing’. Yet, he goes on to reassure them that sorrow and sadness will not last for too long and will not have the last word, the final say. Because he will rise through death to new life, Jesus said to them, ‘your sorrow will turn to joy… your hearts will be full of joy, and that joy, no one shall take from you’. The presence of the risen Lord to us brings joy into our lives, even in those difficult moments of loss, grief and sorrow. In your life, you may be going through the valley of darkness, through the hardest moments of your life, but the Lord’s reassuring words to u is, ‘I am with you’, and this can bring you a share in the Lord’s own joy, even as we try to negotiate your own darkest valleys. Still be strong, hopeful and faithful to God and allow Him to lead the way.
Dear friends, it seems to be more natural that in life, one of the greatest of human joys is the one experienced at the birth of a child, the entrance of another expectant life into the family and the society. Likewise, one of the greatest sorrows is the death of a baby at childbirth or the death of a loved one. At childbirth, the joy of the child’s father who eagerly and uncontrollably walks up and down, to and from the hospital waiting hall, and the joy of the mother at the moment of birth has a unique quality about it. For the father, the news of the birth of his child is tremendously overwhelming, and for the mother, the trials pains, anxiety and labours of pregnancy and childbirth are all gone and forgotten, when her child is born and when she looks upon her baby for the first time. When Jesus looked for a human experience of joy that captured something of the joy of his resurrection, it was to the joy of childbirth that he turned. In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks in the awareness of the deep sorrow that his disciples are experiencing at his forthcoming death; ‘you will be weeping and wailing... you will be sorrowful’. His death, which was to happen on the following day would be a truly traumatic and devastating experience for the disciples. Jesus acknowledges that dark reality, but he also looks beyond that painful experience of his death to the wonderful event of his resurrection, and so he assures his disciples that their sorrow will turn to joy, our sorrows may last all throughout the night, but joy must come in the morning. We may be going terrible and the most difficult times in our families, our states, and our nation Nigeria, but one thing I am sure of is that there will be joy in the morning. Don't give up.
Jesus encouraged his very sorrowful disciples and by extension all of us by saying that they/we will experience a joy akin to the joy of a mother at the birth of her child, a type of joy that no one will take away from them/us. In whatever form, new life is always a cause of joy. We are destined to share in the Lord’s new life, his risen life, beyond death, when our joy will be complete. Today, dearly beloved, Jesus assures his disciples and us that we can begin to taste something of that joy here and now because the risen Christ is always present with us. Insofar as we are open to his presence and really take to heart the Lord’s words to Saint Paul in the first reading, ‘I am with you’, we will begin to experience something of that heavenly joy that awaits us. So, let us never be discharged when we are persecuted, let us not worry when we are suffering for the sake of preaching the Gospel of Christ, let our hearts not be troubled when we have to walk through dark valleys, for the Lord is always with us and he will surely give us the kind of great joy that no one will take away from us. Against all odds, still move with your heads high because God got your backs. You are not alone.
Do have a joyful weekend. Stay safe, stay alive, stay faithful, keep persevering and may God bless you with a domineering and an abundant joy. Amen.
-PadreCharlesLwanga
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