Fifth Sunday of Easter

The Call to be “Da Vine”

WHOEVER REMAINS IN ME WILL BEAR MUCH FRUIT.

Loving God, we thank you for the gift of community. Help us better appreciate that we can do more together than we can alone. Keep our communities focused on Jesus as the source.

Share a time when you were part of a community that lost its focus and got off track.

Patricia Gualinga, attended a news conference to discuss the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon at the Vatican on Oct. 17, 2019. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

If God is for us, who can be against us?” The Sarayaku people, living in the Amazon, depend on Amazon water for their food. They stood against an oil company in the early 2000s and won in 2012 with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Now, they inspire Indigenous communities. The Amazon shows how we’re all connected. Patricia Gualinga, a Kichwa Indigenous leader of the Sarayaku people, wants to inspire us to care more about Indigenous people and water. She asked Pope Francis for his support since he acknowledged the role of the Church to back the fight against harmful environmental practices that impacts particularly those on the margins. (Maryknoll Magazine, June 2023)

On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first;he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. Jn 20:1-9

The relationship between Mary Magdalen, Peter, and the other disciple teaches us what it means to walk together as missionary disciples. On that dark Sunday morning, in confronting the disturbance of Jesus’ death, they were not concerned with who saw what first, or who reached the tomb first. Rather, they leaned on each other. They read signs of hope in the stone that had been rolled away, and the neatly folded burial cloths, and they believed. We too must learn to look beyond the distress we see and work together to find signs of hope.

What are the fears or barriers that the Spirit is inviting you and your community to put aside in order to walk together in hope?

Walking with others requires being inclusive. Inclusivity means inviting people into our circles who may think, look, and act differently. Take inventory of how diverse your community is and then reach out to someone outside your usual circle for a meal and fellowship.

Learn more about synodality from Fr. Joe Healey, MM.

Loving God, send us forth as a community renewed by the resurrection to be hope and joy to the world around us.