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Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 10, 2026
Philip went down to the city of Samaria
and proclaimed the Christ to them.
With one accord, the crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip
when they heard it and saw the signs he was doing.
For unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice,
came out of many possessed people,
and many paralyzed or crippled people were cured.
There was great joy in that city.
Now when the apostles in Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God,
they sent them Peter and John,
who went down and prayed for them,
that they might receive the Holy Spirit,
for it had not yet fallen upon any of them;
they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Then they laid hands on them
and they received the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
Shout joyfully to God, all the earth,
sing praise to the glory of his name;
proclaim his glorious praise.
Say to God, “How tremendous are your deeds!”
“Let all on earth worship and sing praise to you,
sing praise to your name!”
Come and see the works of God,
his tremendous deeds among the children of Adam.
He has changed the sea into dry land;
through the river they passed on foot;
therefore let us rejoice in him.
He rules by his might forever.
Hear now, all you who fear God, while I declare
what he has done for me.
Blessed be God who refused me not
my prayer or his kindness!
Beloved, sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.
Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear,
so that, when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God, than for doing evil.
For Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God. Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the Spirit.
Jesus said to his disciples:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always,
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept,
because it neither sees nor knows him.
But you know him, because he remains with you,
and will be in you.
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
In a little while the world will no longer see me,
but you will seeme, because I live and you will live.
On that day you will realize that I am in my Father
and you are in me and I in you.
Whoever has my commandments and observes them
is the one who loves me.
And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”
*****
"Beloved, sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts," writes Peter. Is this the first pontifical injunction? Too cryptic by half! If you think of 'sanctify' as 'to make holy', it seems to be back to front. Christ sanctifies us... So Peter must mean 'venerate', treat as holy, set in a place apart. Give Christ first priority.
Now there's a question for us: 'Priority - First Place'? If I were unfortunate enough to be in some sort of TV interview and be asked: "Who is most important in your life?" would I spontaneously answer, "Jesus Christ"? Not likely!
We live in a secular world that cannot see any sense or purpose in religion. God has no place in any sort of public discourse. For all practical purposes 'God' does not exist. The very idea of God having something to do with our everyday affairs is a relic from other times, not needed in our day when we work with facts and figures, and both feet on the ground.
But ignoring reality does not make it less real. The truth is that God is not only the 'first mover', the creator, but every moment of existence is given as an act of continuing creation. The cosmos was not started x billion years ago, launched into space and left to run of its own accord. The truth is that all things are dependent on God's creative action moment by moment, and that includes our doings, for good or ill.
This is the truth Jesus stood witness to before Pilate, before the Empire's seat of judgement. This is the truth the Spirit reveals and makes meaningful for those who will listen and learn. The world cannot accept the Spirit, Jesus says, because it neither sees nor knows him. There we have the problem with the secular world: because it does not know the Spirit it does not know the truth.
It is staggering to see falsehoods being paraded shamelessly at the highest levels of world affairs, and then such a great fuss if someone is suspected of 'lying to parliament'. A whole profession has been created to check on the facts, to verify or falsify assertions made by public figures because we can no longer trust anyone to keep to the truth. The art of politics has become the art of deceiving the public.
"But you know him [the Spirit of truth]," Jesus says, "because he remains with you, and will be in you." Another statement to take your breath away! The first question that comes to mind is, 'Do I ever think to rely on the Spirit to show me the truth?' Jesus said, "[The Spirit] will make known to you everything I have taught you."
*****
One answer to the question 'What's the point of life?' could be: 'The goal is to find one's true self; to become thoroughly true in oneself.' It seems inevitable that in the process of growing up and learning we adopt many half measures, substitutes, temporary fixes that become integrated into our psyche until the authentic self is obscured by a tangle of half-truths and self-delusions. Sorting this out might be the major task of our adult years – or a job for retirement.
That would be to sanctify the Christ as Lord in our hearts.
We might also be able to follow Peter's very down-to-earth injunction, that you should "always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear..."
If you were ready for the question, 'Who is most important in your life?' it would be easy to answer like this: 'Well, on the day to day level, of course, it's my partner, our children, their partners and children, but on another level, where we see the big picture, it is God, our Father in heaven and Jesus the anointed one and the Spirit of truth who guides and governs everything.' I may be conscious of the Spirit pretty well all the time but go days without thinking of one or other of the others. It wasn't always so, that awareness of the Spirit, and of itself it doesn't make any difference in me except that it puts me in the right frame to be further graced by God. 'Amazing Grace!'
Ah, but the struggle to be true goes on and on. Who dares to share their innermost thought, for surely they are kidding themselves; people will see through them so easily? To be true would be so simple. That's why if you were to pursue a spiritual life as a hermit you would live in total simplicity. The things we surround ourselves with are props to the false image we have of ourselves. So much energy goes into propping up that image.
As always virtue follows a middle path, not too much, not too little. stress this fragile ego too severely and something will break. We'll become fanatical, unbalanced, and that is not the way to sanctify the Christ in your heart. We have a whole lifetime in which to sort things out; the key is to do a bit every day.
The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot accept because it neither sees nor knows him.
That's it in a nutshell: that's what's wrong with the world! The world does not know what truth is. Which leads us to ask, do we? Pilate's question still has some cogency: "What is truth?"
Needless to say, Jesus had no intention of taking up the philosophical debate and neither have we. For Pilate it was just a cynical shrug in response to Jesus' declaration: "I stand here is witness to the truth." What did Jesus mean?
What is it the world does not know? Is this ignorance real or feigned? Is it the all-pervading darkness that the world cannot break out of without illumination from outside? "Father, forgive them: they don't know what they're doing." Perhaps the answer is right there: we have lost the ability to be true. Whatever happened back at the start (cf. Garden of Eden story), it warped the human psyche, making us unable to see clearly and distinguish between what is good and what is bad, between what is true and what is false, fake, feigned.
I look back over various items in my past and I wonder: "How ever did I do that?" It seemed okay at the time; even the only way I could go. But in hindsight it is absolutely despicable. What was blinding me to the truth? Others saw it and behaved differently: what was wrong with me?
If you look at it this way, salvation is about learning. Learning to know the true from the false. How do you separate good from evil in life?