the language of Eternal Life

JESUS INVITES  US TO LIVE THE LIFE OF PRAYER AND LOVE

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your Son so that your Son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that your Son may have eternal life to all you gave him. Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ. I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. Now glorify me, Father, with the glory that I had with you before the world began. I revealed your name to those you gave me out of this world. They belong to you and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I do not pray for the world, but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything is mine is yours, and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world while I am coming to you. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of that reflection of Jesus comes from the Last Supper, and it's part of the long prayer we call the priestly prayer at the Last Supper. We believe John was present for that, the author of this gospel. He is the one, supposedly, that rested near Jesus. And as they all sat around the table, you know, in Roman style or Hebrew style, they leaned on their arm or their elbow as they ate. And he, John, was able to put his head on the chest of Jesus. Makes a lot of sense if you know how they were sitting. And he describes himself as the one whom Jesus loved. I'm giving you that little insight because this reading comes from the heart of Jesus. This reading reflects who Jesus as God is, how close he is to the Father, and as a matter of fact, as he said before, one with the Father. And if Jesus is one with the Father, then his words are authentic and true, and his words are for us to know that he came to us so that we can be one with him, Jesus, and also one with the Father. It's a little poetic, it's a little repetitive the way he says it tonight. I say tonight because this was the Last Supper. But the heart of it is God, Jesus are one. And as he himself says, eternal life is knowing God. I don't care what you think about eternal life, what your imaginations are, what you were raised with as a child, you know, heaven and all these wonderful promises of heaven. I've never been there. I will be there someday, I hope. And you will too, I hope. But eternal life is knowing God. So you've already started eternal life. All of us have. From the moment of our baptisms, confirmations, and the other sacraments we may have received, we share eternal life. Right here and now, right here in Manhattan, we're living eternal life. And I guess it's up to us each day, and us to use of the scriptures each day, to appropriate that, to make that understood and normal for us each day. What is eternal life? And Jesus makes it very clear. Knowing God. And in my field, I run into a lot of people. Well, I know God, but um, I don't go to church. Okay. I find God on the beach. Okay. I find God in the mountains, and when I go out into the forest, okay. You know a semblance of God, if that's your philosophy. You know the means of getting to God, but that's only the beginning of the track. Jesus makes it very clear: eternal life is knowing God. How do you know God? Through prayer. Prayer is the dialogue we have with God. Prayer is God's love language to us. Jesus has given us a long love letter today in the gospel. Speaking to God about himself, speaking to God about his goals, to pass God's word on to his friends, telling God how appreciative he is of God, and how he depends on God, and how he is expecting to be glorified by God. Now, this could be your prayer and my prayer. There was a piece on the news this morning about how difficult it is for college graduates in this area, New York, probably the whole nation, to find jobs. And they've a lot of them have gone to other positions that they were than they were trained for. To get to that point, we need to pray. We need to pray that we're not alone. And I'm talking about the college grads. They're not alone. And to know that God is with them because of the promise of Jesus Christ, saying that he will be with us always, and if he's with us, God's with us. But we got to know him. How do we know him? Prayer. Speaking to God. We come to church, we have all the written prayers we can imagine. Good. It's a good way to start. Following the words of another saint, following the words of another author. But the best way to start, the language of love, is from your heart. As you would for those you love in your life, you don't read a card to them to tell them how much you love them. Some people do give in to that. And for 25 cents, the message is over. But I'm suggesting that we, imitating Jesus, speak to God from our hearts. He reads them, he knows them. But he wants us to make the connection. And prayer is the language of eternal life. Because you're not praying out into the dust. When we pray, we focus on who we're praying to. And that's God, as revealed in Jesus, Holy Spirit, and the Father. Daily prayer, speaking to God from our hearts. I was at a party last night with friends, and they're, you know, struggling with getting the kids to church, and they're struggling with going to church. Start it at home. Start your prayer at home. Coming to church is like the cherry on top. Coming to church gives us the Eucharist, gives us the gospel, gives us camaraderie and fellowship with each other. Struggling starts in the heart. And the language of love, the language of prayer, brings our heart and God's heart together. And metaphorically, God has no heart as biologically. Jesus did as a man and still does as a glorified second person of the Blessed Trinity. But heart to heart is eternal language. You wouldn't speak nonsense to a person you say you love or engaged with or a parent. No, we speak heart to heart, as Jesus is speaking to his Father in this gospel. Heart to heart, revealing everything, laying it all out. And we come to church to receive the Eucharist, which is the body of Christ, it's the summit of our prayer that we actually are connecting to Jesus and his Father and the Holy Spirit. Speaking to the beloved daily. Some of us can't, some of us, our beloved might be deceased, our beloved might be in another country, another state. But we have, thank God, we have the technology to FaceTime them and speak that way if they're at a long distance. But you know, and as I know, it's not the same as being there in the same space as the beloved. Jesus is available to us wherever we are. Not by Facebook, not by technology, not by TikTok. Right there where we are, Jesus is there. You can speak to him right now. And he reads our hearts. And prayer is the language of love. Prayer is the language of God. Prayer is the eternal language. Yes, we have the celebrations of all the Sundays of Easter, today's being the seventh Sunday. But we can't depend on the calendar for our prayer. We need to depend on ourselves and our connection to Jesus in our prayer. Some of us might be embarrassed if we say Jesus reads our hearts. He knows what's on our minds all the time. You might say, oh my goodness. Really? Yeah. He's your vade makeum. There's a Latin phrase, go with me. He's always with you. He promised that. He conquered death to prove to us that death is not going to hold him down. He ascended to the Father, and he proves to us that although I'm gone, I'm with you. And next week, as a calendar celebration, we will commemorate that event when the Holy Spirit comes upon the church. That's his way of sending his spirit to us. Boy, if we were communicating on FaceTime or one of those platforms to someone we love at a long distance, wouldn't you like to reach through and touch him or her? Reach through and hold each other's hand as you're saying words of love. Here, now in this life, you do have that opportunity, but sometimes we don't. With God, we do always. He hears us. He holds us in the palm of his hands. The church in the scriptures reveals like a format, like a map on what the early church did. Well, we read in Acts of the Apostles, they gathered in prayer. This section of the Acts of the Apostles tells us after Jesus ascended, we believe that was like Mount Tabor, they walked back to Jerusalem and they gathered in prayer in what we call the upper room, which is where they had the Last Supper. It was a spacious room. And they prayed. And they waited for Jesus' return. And we are still waiting for his physical and glorious return. But in the meantime, we're connected to him through prayer. That's the early church did. That's our mandate. And you'll hear next week, continuing that Acts of the Apostles, and the Holy Spirit came to them. They didn't go into their closets and they didn't go into their rooms and they didn't seek shelter. They opened the doors and went out to preach Jesus alive. That's our message. They sent that message to us. Jesus alive. That you and I can speak to through prayer. And when we pray, we're waiting for his return in glory. But when we pray, we're also asking him to give us the strength to deal with today, to deal with the lack of employment, to deal with my broken relationship, to deal with my new relationship, to deal with my parents, to deal with all the circumstances of the world. We have the ability to bring the power and blessing of Jesus into our lives and share it with each other. And you don't all have to do it from here, from the pulpit. Some of us have to do it in the bar, some of us have to do it with music, some of us have to do it when we're dancing, some of us have to do it when we're crying, some of us have to do it in class. Doesn't matter. Whenever I talk to Jesus, he listens to me. That's our goal. Seventh Sunday of Easter, okay, it's nice that we commemorate it historically. But it reminds us that Jesus never left. He broke the thing that separates people eternally. Death destroyed it. So when you and I speak to Jesus, we are speaking the language of eternal life. He said, I revealed your name to those you gave me in the world. They belong to you. You gave them to me. And now we are to keep his word. Trust him. Pray every day.