by Deacon Randall Ory | May 29, 2025 1:00 am
And now he is gathering the scattered—you and me—to take us with him and this is nothing but the peace and joy of our Lord! The two things that he talked about the most—peace and joy—and this peace of Jesus is not a transitory peace, but lasting peace. Peace that begins here and finds its fullness in the heavenly city.
Happy Easter!
You know, even this deep into the Easter season it’s possible that you’re still vacuuming up that cherished, but annoying, Easter basket grass. You know what I’m talking about, right? The yellow grass, pink, blue; all unnatural grass colors. If you are still vacuuming that up this deep in the season, get a new vacuum cleaner!
But praise be God! It is the Sixth Sunday of Easter and we are still celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and we’re still celebrating his presence in our own lives. Now you know this. As modern people, we are overloaded with visual stimuli. And we need something to verbally remind us, sometimes as simple, yet as powerful as happy Easter. And particularly so this deep in the season because the church does not give us any sort of visual marker as to where we are in the season.
Here’s what I mean. Recall what happens on the third Sunday of Advent and the fourth Sunday of Lent. The church shifts the liturgical color from purple to rose. Why? To signal to us visually that joy continues, that joy permeates the Lenton season even though it is a penitential season. But we have no such color change in Easter. The color of white the color of joy and new life persists without change. Add to this visual consistency of the white color the continued consistency of our scripture readings, or at least the books from which they are drawn.
All through this Easter season in 2025, we hear from the Acts of the Apostles, from Revelation, and from St. John, just as we did today. So it is possible, in fact might I say very likely, that we could get lulled to sleep with such wonderful, yet relentless consistency. the same liturgical color, the same scripture books—fantastic as they are—from which our readings are drawn.
But there was a subtle change on the fourth Sunday of Easter, two weeks ago; a change so subtle that you might have missed it and reasonably so. But it powerfully relates to our meditation on the Easter mysteries, both personally and as a community. You see, every year in Easter—every year no exceptions—the first three Sundays of Easter we hear the gospels on Easter Sunday, the second Sunday, and the third Sunday of Easter—they’re all drawn from the empty tomb stories and from the resurrection appearances. Of course! It’s Easter. The risen Lord, that’s who we celebrate, that’s where our gospels are drawn from. Yet on the fourth Sunday, and rather subtly and without notice, no fanfare, the church shifts the gospels on the fourth, fifth, and sixth Sundays away from the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances and to how we might experience Jesus in a new and varied relationship.
Now she does this—the church—even though the the empty tomb of course is foundational to our faith. So why the shift in the gospels? The church is gently but quietly saying to us, “Don’t keep staring in the empty tomb. Yes, yes the empty tomb of course, but Jesus is the Risen One, he is alive and you encounter him in varied new and contemporary relationships and settings.” The fourth Sunday two weeks ago: Good Shepherd Sunday; last week the fifth Sunday: Jesus gives us the new commandment to love; and now today the sixth Sunday: with the Holy Spirit indwelling each of us, sent by the Father in Jesus’ name. This shift in the Easter gospels is not meant to merely shake us up. It’s meant to remind us to look for Jesus afresh and anew each and every day.
Today friends, our Lord is reminding us that the Holy Spirit is our advocate, our comforter, sent in His name by the Father. What a joy and a consolation this can bring to our heart!
Now for a moment, let us consider our second reading today from the book of Revelation. Now you know as Catholics, many Catholics have all but given up on the book of Revelation, right? It’s too complicated. It’s too ambiguous. All this “sign” language and it seems like some religious people have sort of co-opted it and find in every single word and syllable of the book something happening today in our tumultuous world. But this need not bog us down at all for that book in its entirety and all the readings we’ve been hearing is about the risen Lord—the one who is alive and alive in your life.
In the early weeks of Easter, the book of Revelation stated that the lamb Jesus was on the throne. Notice on the throne! And we also heard the most comforting words that you can almost hear from sacred scripture—that God’s dwelling is with his people and that God will always be their God. And now today more stunning imagery! What did we hear? What did we see? A holy city, a city with high walls, twelve gates ornamented by precious jewels. None of it meant to be taken literally and yet to be understood beyond the literal, beyond what we can imagine. In fact, just whatever we could imagine—the best thing times a billion. Notice the shift from previous weeks: the apostle John has abandoned the imagery that Jesus sits on the throne and now says Jesus is the throne and is the temple of God and all the metaphors of sun and moon—you know the sun that turns dark and the moon that turns into blood—all of these images fade away in today’s reading.
Now the light comes solely from the lamb himself. Friends, this is the message. This is the Easter message that the risen lamb, the risen Lord Jesus is the throne of God’s presence, and he took his glorified body, the body he took on in the incarnation and seen at Christmas, and he took that glorified body to heaven. And now he is gathering the scattered—you and me—to take us with him and this is nothing but the peace and joy of our Lord! The two things that he talked about the most—peace and joy—and this peace of Jesus is not a transitory peace, but lasting peace. Peace that begins here and finds its fullness in the heavenly city. Let me repeat that… The peace that begins here and finds its fullness in the heavenly city! No wonder we are still saying happy Easter. Praise God, indeed!
Acts 15:1-2, 22-29 | Psalms 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8 | Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23 | John 14:23-29[1]
Image credit: “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” by Jan van Eyck | Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons[2]
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