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Two-Minute Homily by Fr Adrian Sharp for the Sixth Sunday of Easter 2023.
“Our Lord’s daily return to us upon the altar is a constant fulfilment of His promise, I will not leave you orphans, I will come back to you.”

• Two-Minute Homily Transcript

  Two-Minute Homily Transcript

  Author: Archdiocese of Brisbane

  In today’s Gospel Our Lord gives words that are full of promise; and they hint at the mysteries that we will celebrate in the coming weeks,
  in His Ascension, Pentecost, the Blessed Trinity, and Corpus Christi. Our Lord says, “I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever, that Spirit of truth”. With the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the apostles would become fearless missionaries, ready even to give their lives for the Lord. The Holy Spirit would make them remember all that He had said to them, and the Spirit would teach them everything.

  Our Lord also promises, I will not leave you orphans, I will come back to you. In the first instance, Our Lord is referring to His resurrection, when He came back to His disciples after His death. And from our standpoint, we hear His words as His promise to return at the end of time in His glorious second coming. But before then, we can also hear in His words His promise to return to us even daily, when by the power of the Holy Spirit He returns in the Eucharistic sacrifice, and the elements of bread and wine become for us His most holy Body and Blood. Our Lord’s daily return to us upon the altar is a constant fulfilment of His promise, I will not leave you orphans, I will come back to you.

  Three times in today’s Gospel text Our Lord also refers to the Blessed Trinity dwelling in us. He says that “you will understand that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.” His words reveal the closeness of God to us, and the action of God in our lives. Hearing these promises of the Lord, the promise of another Advocate, the Holy Spirit; the promise not to leave us orphans but to return to us; and the promise of the divine indwelling in our souls. These promises are a source of joy and consolation to us. They also challenge us to live so that nothing we do might block the action of God in us, or separate us from His grace.

  May we live in such a way that the Holy Spirit can produce His fruits in us; and so that we will anticipate and treasure the Lord’s return to us daily in the eucharist, and at the end of our mortal lives.