Reflection for Seventh Sunday of Easter Year A 2023

A Message from Fr. Wilmer Chirino

Reflection of the VII Sunday
of Resurrection-
“Father, the hour has come to glorify your Son!”

Christ crucified and risen is the great Easter proclamation that every believer is called to proclaim and witness to with courage.

Sisters and brothers, may the ever- Virgin Blessed Mary, perfect disciple of Her Son and Lord, help us to be ever more docile to the Paraclete, to the Spirit of truth, so that we may learn each day to love one another as Jesus has loved us. Amen.

Thus prayed Jesus, the day before his passion and death on the Cross, as he walked not to glory, but to humiliation.

Humiliation. He knew that the infamy of the Cross was the way to true glory.

Jesus has to pray for his disciples now that he is leaving; he does so, that they may truly understand what it means to be one in him-as he is one with the Father.

To understand that will only be possible through the sending of the Spirit, and this sending will only

be possible when Jesus has “crowned his work.” Then Jesus transmitted the Holy Spirit to his Church. Man is called to holiness, to be the artisan of a humanity renewed by divine glory. And the believer, through baptism, becomes a witness to that supernatural hope which sustains man’s pilgrimage on earth. This is often marked by trials and sufferings. We are also called to participate in the divine life, which embraces eternity.

“This is eternal life,” Jesus says, “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” All the faithful, regardless of their state or rank, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity. By this charity and by our own holy lives, Christians are invited to become a light for others in the ways of the world.

Sisters and brothers, may the ever-virgin Mary, who was perfectly poor in the Holy Spirit, find herself

among us who pray. May she complete with her perfect prayer every imperfect prayer. Let us ask through her, and united in prayer, that she invoke the gift of the Holy Spirit. Amen