St. Thomas the Apostle Parish

Jesus predicted many things, including the world's animosity toward Him and His followers. All four Gospels emphasize that Jesus understood the hostility He and His disciples would face.

 

He said, "No slave is greater than his master." This statement carries profound implications. In today's Gospel, He explained that if the world is hostile toward the Master, His servants should expect the same treatment. This also means that if the Master humbled Himself to wash the feet of His servants, they should be prepared to do the same for others, exemplifying humility and service.

 

Jesus's statement, "No slave is greater than his master," encourages us to reflect deeply on our relationship with Him. It highlights our dependence on the Holy Spirit to model our lives after the Master.

Friendship is a tremendous blessing. Deep friendships don’t just happen; people choose each other as friends based on mutual attraction, shared interests, and similar perspectives. Once a friendship is strong and well-established, friends can be themselves and express their feelings more openly.

 

Jesus refers to His disciples as friends, saying, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” He has also chosen to befriend us, demonstrating His friendship by sharing His true self. He has revealed His relationship with the Father and shown His friendship by laying down His life for us. While He has done His part, we must also fulfill ours for the friendship to flourish. We need to choose Jesus just as He has chosen us. To remain in His love and friendship, we must love one another as He has loved us and befriend others as He has befriended us.

The Scriptures are filled with passages about joy and rejoicing. St. Paul teaches that joy is a fruit of the Spirit. In the Gospel, Jesus expresses His desire for His joy to be within us. At the heart of the Gospel, this joy serves as a beacon of hope and positivity, since "Gospel" means "good news." On the eve of His Crucifixion, Jesus longed for His joy to be present in His disciples, demonstrating the enduring power of joy in the face of adversity.

 

It may seem strange to experience joy in such a frightening situation, where hostility and violent death loom. However, Jesus’ sense of joy comes from His knowledge that He is loved by His Father. This joy also arises from His sharing of that love with His disciples and all of humanity.

 

Joy is the natural outgrowth of genuine love, which originates from God's love for us and extends to our love for one another in His Name.

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus describes Himself and His followers using the metaphor of the vine and its branches. He speaks about pruning away the branches that do not bear fruit. This pruning can symbolize many things, as there are various aspects of our lives that we need to cut back or change.

 

We need to eliminate those things that hinder us from following the two essential commandments: to believe in and love God, and to love one another as Jesus commanded.

 

It is important to prune away whatever prevents our faith from flourishing in our lives and souls. Each of us has different things that require pruning. This might include pride, selfishness, materialistic desires, negative thoughts, or unhealthy relationships. We can be certain that, by our very nature, we must remove perceptions, prejudices, judgments, and attitudes that block our faith from bearing fruit.

 

Let us take some time in prayer to reflect on what prevents us from adhering to these two fundamental commandments. Together, let us commit to pruning those distractions from our lives.

 

In today's Gospel, Jesus offers His disciples comfort and courage as they are anxious about His impending death. He tells them, "Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid," a message that recurs throughout the Gospel. This reassures us of Jesus’ unwavering love and support.

 

As disciples of Jesus, we need both challenges and encouragement. Jesus understood how to provide that encouragement when a renewed heart was necessary.

 

Today, the Risen Lord continues to uplift His disciples. When we feel discouraged about our lives, it can bring us down and hinder us from taking action. The Lord wants to instill refreshed enthusiasm in our hearts, which the Gospel describes as a peace that the world cannot give. This peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather a deep sense of tranquility and security that comes from strong faith in Jesus.

 

Love is at the heart of today’s Gospel passage. It speaks of our love for Jesus, His love for us, and the Father’s love for us. God the Father shows His love by giving us His Son. Jesus demonstrates His love by laying down His life for us and sharing everything He has learned from the Father. We show our love for Jesus by keeping His word and living according to His teachings, which can be summed up as: "Love one another as I have loved you."

 

Jesus promises to send us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s role is essential, as He continually brings Jesus’ outlook and perspective to our minds. It’s comforting to know that the Holy Spirit is there to help us keep Jesus’ word and love one another as He has loved us. This Gospel passage presents a comprehensive vision of the Christian life: it highlights God’s relationship with us as Father, Son, and Spirit, as well as our loving relationships with God and one another.

Several years ago, NBC's Today show told the story of Oral Lee Brown.

 

One morning, back in 1987,  Mrs. Brown was walking to her real estate office in East Oakland, California. She was stopped by a young girl who asked her for a quarter. Feeling sorry for the six-year-old, Mrs. Brown took her to a store in the neighborhood and told her to pick out anything she wanted.

 

Mrs. Brown expected the girl to run straight for the candy aisle. Instead, she picked out a loaf of bread and a pound of bologna. It was obvious to Mrs. Brown that the child really was hungry. She was deeply moved by the child's situation. She had many questions: Why wasn't the child in school? Where was her mother? She wanted to visit the girl's home and find out what the problem was, but she was afraid of what she might find.

 

She later spoke with her brother, who mentored kids, and he said she couldn't change the world, but she might be able to make a difference in the lives of a few kids. So, she decided that what she would do was to "adopt" a first-grade class - the kind of class that was made up of kids like that hungry little girl; the children of families struggling with poverty. Mrs. Brown asked the principal of Brookfield Elementary School, which serves many poor families, to allow her to work with a class that no one expected to amount to anything.

 

She began by meeting weekly with the students, monitoring their grades, and offering encouragement. She then made the extraordinary offer to pay for the college tuition of anyone in the class who decided they wanted to go to college and maintained grades good enough to be accepted.

 

We have all heard stories of wealthy people paying for others' education. Mrs. Brown was different, however. She was born very poor, the youngest of fourteen children. She built her own real estate business while raising her three daughters. But the promise she made to that class was one that would take hundreds of thousands of dollars, money she didn't have. She started by saving $10,000 of her own money and, by soliciting her community and local businesses, raised the funds needed.

 

It was nearly forty years ago that Mrs. Brown met the hungry little girl and adopted the first-grade class at Brookfield. Nineteen of the students from that class graduated from college. The organization that Mrs. Brown built has since added more student groups.

 

Mrs. Brown gives all the credit to the students and their struggling families. She says, "No matter how much I did, it took a lot of effort on their part." She asks only one thing of her students. She says, "When you go out into the world, I want you to reach back into the community like I did and inspire hope in some other child."

 

What began as a one-woman project has grown into a beacon of hope. Oral Lee Brown has done an awful lot for East Oakland children and their families, not because of her wealth but because of her compassion and commitment.

 

It is exactly the same kind of "work" Jesus asks his disciples and us to take up and continue, with this promise: If we are willing to let the spirit of God lead us to do great things for others, we will discover within ourselves the courage, conviction, and means to discover our own Easter miracles.

 

Regardless of our career path - teacher, doctor, lawyer, laborer, bank teller, religious sister or brother, deacon or priest - we are called, through baptism, to do the work begun by Jesus: to bring the forgiveness, justice, peace, and consolation of God into our homes and workplaces, schools and playgrounds. It is hard and difficult work to take on - but, with the promised gift of God's grace and the courage of our faith in the Son's Resurrection, we can do even greater things than we can imagine.

When Paul and Barnabas were expelled from the synagogue and banished from the region, what seemed like a failure actually contributed to the spread of the Gospel. Their forced departure opened new doors, allowing the message of Christ to reach people who might never have heard it otherwise. Paul quotes Isaiah: "I have made you a light to the Gentiles, that you may be an instrument of salvation to the ends of the earth." In this way, even adversity became a means by which God's plan unfolded, transforming obstacles into opportunities for grace.

 

Paul's perspective offers valuable insights during any crisis or transition, emphasizing trust in God's loving providence. Rather than focusing on setbacks or disappointments, he looks for the ways God can bring good even from difficulties. We should also adopt this approach, particularly in uncertain times, learning to see challenges as invitations to deeper faith and openness to God's surprising work in our lives.

 

Let us pray for deep trust in God's goodness, confident that He will guide us and give us strength and wisdom if we open our minds and hearts to His grace.

 

In our Gospel passage, Jesus tells the Apostles that He is leaving them and returning to the Father from whom He came. Though His words may have been difficult for the Apostles to hear, Jesus reassures them with a promise: He will return one day to take them with Him to His Father’s house. This is not just a promise for the Apostles, but also our ultimate destiny. Jesus came among us to show us the way to the Father and to invite us into a loving, eternal relationship with God; this defines His entire mission.

 

The many dwelling places in His Father’s house symbolize universal hospitality and inclusiveness. The Kingdom of Heaven is not meant for a select few; it is a place of welcome and peace offered to everyone, regardless of background or status. Jesus extends this invitation to all people, calling each of us to follow Him, because He is the way to the Father for all who seek Him. He promised that He would draw all people to Himself when He is raised up, showing that God’s love knows no boundaries.

 

Let us pray that we will follow Jesus as the way from this life, with all its challenges and trials, to the life of Heaven—a life of eternal joy and peace.

Our Gospel passage today takes us back to the Last Supper, when Jesus and His Apostles gathered in the Upper Room, just after Jesus washed His Apostles’ feet. With this humble gesture, Jesus not only demonstrated humility but also gave a powerful example of what it truly means to serve others. As He knelt before His followers, He showed that real leadership is rooted in love and service—a lesson He expects all who minister in His name to carry forward into their lives and actions.

 

When we accept the title "Christian," we commit ourselves to serving the poor, the suffering, the oppressed, prisoners, and the sick. This calling to serve goes beyond simple acts of charity or kindness; it invites us to recognize the dignity and value of every person, especially those society may overlook. Authentic Christian service flows from genuine humility and a sincere desire to uplift others, not as a path for personal recognition or advancement. Our goal is to embody Jesus’ compassionate presence in the world, becoming instruments of hope and healing wherever there is need. To live this out, we must set aside our ambitions and pride, remaining open to the ways God calls us to serve, even when it tests our comfort or expectations.