MASS READINGS
May 25, 2025 (Readings on USCCB website)
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COLLECT PRAYER
Sixth Sunday of Easter: Grant, almighty God, that we may celebrate with heartfelt devotion these days of joy, which we keep in honor of the risen Lord, and that what we relieve in remembrance we may always hold to in what we do. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
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"Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid." We are not alone or without help in the life that we have embraced. The Church strengthens our faith and feeds our souls "with the pure milk of her teaching, with the bread of the Eucharist; she makes us witnesses of Christ's resurrection and of the victory which He won over the forces of evil."
The Optional Memorials of St. Bede, St. Gregory VII and St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, which are ordinarily celebrated today, are superseded by the Sunday liturgy.
Commentary on the Sunday Mass Readings for the Sixth Sunday, Cycle C:
The First Reading is taken from the Acts of the Apostles 15:1-2, 22-29 and concerns the Council of Jerusalem which falls in the middle of the book of Acts and describes the turning point for the Church when the council officially recognized the evangelization of the Gentiles. This evangelization had been initiated by Sts. Peter, Barnabas and Paul. Thus, the Christian church broke away from the Mosaic rules while maintaining its roots in the rich theology and traditions of the chosen people.
The Second Reading is from the Book of Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23 and continues the description of the Heavenly Jerusalem. In the heavenly Jerusalem there is no longer any need for God to have a dwelling-place, because God the Father himself and the Lamb are always present. The Godhead does not need to be brought to mind by the temple (the symbol of his invisible presence), because the blessed will always see God face to face. This sight of God is what causes the righteous to be forever happy.
The Gospel is from John 14:23-29. In the first reading at today's Mass, we were given the story of the first General Council ever held by the Church authorities. There we saw that a vital decision was reached through the guidance and assistance of the Holy Spirit. "It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and ours" (Acts 15:28) was how the authorities announced the conclusion they had reached. In this Gospel which we have just read, Christ promised his Apostles, the night before his death, that when he returned to the Father, the Holy Spirit would be sent to them. He would teach them all things and recall to their minds all that Christ had taught them. In other words, the Church, through the Apostles, was promised the direct assistance of the Holy Spirit in preserving and interpreting what we call "the deposit of faith" or the sum total of the divine revelation given to us for our sanctification.
That promise was fulfilled in a very solemn way within twenty years of our Lord's resurrection at the Council of Jerusalem. It has been fulfilled again and again down through the history of the Church. And this has been the case not only on the solemn occasions of General Councils, or when definitions concerning faith and morals were given ex cathedra by the Pope, but in many circumstances of less solemnity.
The Holy Spirit "breathes where he wills." He assists the local authorities in the Church. He inspires individual Christians if they call on him in their need. He inspires young people of both sexes to offer their lives to the service of the Church and their neighbor. He has inspired founders of orders and congregations to form institutes which would help the spread of the faith. He is at work today among us and among the separated brothers of the Church, helping and inspiring them towards that unity for which Christ prayed.
There are moments of crisis in all our lives, moments when a vital decision has to be made. If that decision is wrongly made it may not only seriously interfere with our earthly welfare, but more important still jeopardize our eternal salvation. We should call on the Holy Spirit to help us daily, but we should call for his assistance especially when we have a serious decision to make.
His role in the Church and in the lives of all Christians is to preserve and protect the revelation that God has given us. There are times in the lives of many of us when we are tempted to doubt about what we are called on to believe, or to hesitate with regard to what we are called on to do. It is on such occasions that the help of the Holy Spirit is especially necessary. He will not fail us if we turn to him earnestly and sincerely.
—Excepted from The Sunday Readings, Fr. Kevin O'Sullivan, O.F.M.
Meditation for the Sixth Sunday of Easter:
"If you ask anything in My Name"
1. "Declare it with the voice of joy and let it be heard, alleluia; declare it even to the ends of the earth: The Lord hath delivered His people, alleluia" (Introit). From the Christian point of view the most important of all truths is the fact that men have been redeemed and that they are the children of God. Now heaven has been opened again to us, and so, too, the heart of the Father. "Amen, amen, I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it you" (Gospel).
2. "Hitherto you have not asked anything in My name." It is true that the apostles had asked the Lord: "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1), and He had taught them how to say the Our Father. And indeed, they had asked Him for an increase of faith. But as yet they had not prayed to the Father in the name of Jesus, basing their request on the fact of His death or on the merits of the blood that He had shed. This was not possible for them, since it was necessary that the Lord first pour forth His blood and sacrifice His life on the cross. It was necessary that He first, as the high priest of the New Covenant "having obtained eternal redemption" by His own blood, enter once into the holy of holies (Heb. 9:12). The Lord begins to exercise His office as our intermediary at the time of His ascension. Thus previous to that time the apostles could not ask in His name.
Only after His death and resurrection and ascension, only after the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, only then did they begin to understand that no one can pray in the name of Jesus unless he bases his prayers on Christ's merits, on His suffering and death, and offers his prayers to the Father through the merits of the blood of Christ. Only he can come to the Father who is one in spirit with the crucified Christ. Only he can expect to be heard who, like the Lord, is willing to be obedient even to death, and who can say with Jesus, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me" (John 4:34). Only when we have acquired the spirit of Christ, His point of view, conformity to the will of God, can we actually pray in the name of Jesus. Then our prayers will be united to His prayers and incorporated in them, to be acknowledged by Him as His own and offered by Him to His Father. Such prayers will certainly be answered.
"Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full" (Gos pel). Our Savior has given the solemn promise, in His own name and in the name of His Father, that "whatsoever you shall ask the Father in My name, that will I do" (John 14:13). In prayer we have an unfailing means for obtaining light, power, and grace from God. "For everyone that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened" (Luke 11:10). He who fails to ask, will not receive; he who asks little, shall receive but little; while he who asks much, will receive much. This divine rule in the order of grace is borne out by experience and by the history of the Church. It is the law that "to the humble [God] giveth grace" (I Pet. 5:5); and "He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich He hath sent empty away" (Luke 1:53). In prayer we abandon ourselves and go to the Father. Why? We become conscious of our own nothingness and misery; in all humility we acknowledge our nothingness and our insufficiency; we humbly confess that we are unable to help ourselves, that we cannot live by ourselves, and that of ourselves we can accomplish nothing. For this reason we lift our hearts to God, for "every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights" (Jas. 1:17). Thus we throw open the doors of our being to the infinity of God, that His light and power may stream in.
Prayer is the respiration of the soul; the soul exhales its own nothingness and inhales God. Prayer is the abandonment of self and a dedication to God. If we would preserve and nourish the life of God which we received in baptism, then we must breathe forth ourselves into God and inhale the light and the power of God. This we do in prayer. There is no grace without prayer. Only he who casts himself down in humility, only he who can abandon himself and his own nothingness, only he who absorbs God—only he can be helped. Only those who ask shall receive.
3. "If you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it you." We ask the Father in the name of Jesus principally when we celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the proper spirit. This we do by taking into our hands His sacred body and His precious blood, the price of our salvation, and offering them up to the Father. "We Thy servants [the priest], and also Thy holy people, . . . offer up to Thy most excellent majesty, from among Thy gifts and presents, a pure victim, a holy victim, a spotless victim, the holy bread of life everlasting and the chalice of eternal salvation" (Canon). Here His sufferings, His blood, and His death speak for us. Here He acts as our advocate and makes our needs the object of His priestly prayer, a prayer which is all-powerful with God. He is our intercessor and intermediary. Now His promise is fulfilled: "Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full." Then the Lord who was sacrificed for us comes into our hearts at Holy Communion. Our hearts now become His dwelling place, where He lives and prays. He elevates our prayers with His own and makes them a part of His adoration, His thanksgiving, His praise. The small grain of incense which is our prayer He puts into the thurible of His praying heart. Thus it becomes a part of His own perfect prayer and rises up to the Father like the smoke of incense. "Through Him and with Him and in Him" the Father receives from us also "all honor and glory."
"Alleluia, I came forth from the Father and am come into the world; again I leave the world and I go to the Father, alleluia." He is our advocate with the Father, He has opened heaven to us again and made our approach to the Father possible. Now since we are children of the Father, we are free to speak and say, "Our Father." Christ, who is our elder brother, prays with us and in us. We pray with Him and in Him and in His name, basing our claims on His merits.
Thus our prayer becomes all-powerful, but only under one condition: "If any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue but deceiving his own heart, this man's religion is vain. Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation, and to keep one's self unspotted from this world."
—Benedict Bauer, O.S.B, from The Light of the World, Vol II
