(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Mass-Blog-for-the-Fourth-Sunday-of-Easter-2025.mp3)
This Sunday’s readings show that ancient places of worship could also be murder scenes. Murder replaced worship in the hearts of many demigods who fancied themselves as acting in God’s name. So, in Sunday’s Gospel reading from John, after Jesus meets up with a group of these judgmental types in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon, all hell breaks loose. Sunday’s reading ends with Jesus telling them, “The Father and I are one.” (John 10:27-30)
Read beyond that point in John’s gospel and we see Jesus threatened with stoning for blasphemy (John 10:31-39). But he throws a zinger back at his persecutors, catching them off guard:
Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”’?
Yes. These demigods couldn’t deny Psalm 82:5-8, where people such as they are equated with fallen gods who wander about in darkness. “Gods though you be, offspring of the Most High, but like any mortal, you shall die.”
Jesus is God of the highest love, not the darkest hate. Though the demigods of hate eventually do kill him, they couldn’t overcome the holy spirit of love that rose from his grave and found a home in the hearts of believers destined to spread Christ’s spirit of truth beyond the end of time. Jesus continues to be the source of their vitality, and he blesses these souls, promising “they shall never perish.”
In Sunday’s first reading (Acts 13:14, 43-52) we see Paul and Barnabas preaching such eternal life before an angry temple mob, just as Jesus did. This mob threatens these men of God for rising above the low standard of godliness that was giving these persecutors anonymous and dark comfort.
Paul and Barnabas tell them:
“The Lord has commanded us, I have made you a light to the gentiles, that you may be an instrument of salvation to the ends of the earth.”
And to the end of time—where darkness can no longer shelter demigods because there is only light. In Sunday’s second reading from the Book of Revelation (Revelation 7:9, 14b-17), we see this bright place of worship. We are told the throng of worshippers here survived a time of great darkness and distress and now stand before God’s throne “to worship him day and night in his temple.”
Instead of fear and darkness, all places of true worship are filled with truth’s light. In such illumination, believers are one with the highest standard of Godliness: Love that lives forever, above and beyond earth’s deadly and deceptive shadows.
–Tom Andel
The contrast between light and darkness clearly illustrates the difference between an eternal life in heavenly light, or the shadowy pain in the darkness of Hell. Jesus is very clear many times in Holy Scripture that there is a place of permanent loss that lasts forever. “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.”
On the other hand He has paved a clearly marked road that leads us to eternal life and the light that only He can give. It seems such an obvious choice, but there is a cost in choosing this road. Look at the price the apostles paid. Do we think we should get in on the cheap?
The direction is clear. Simple, but not easy!
Yes, we’ve always complicated what life is about. We make it more of a struggle than it has to be. Faith lightens the load. As Jesus taught, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30)