Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Today's Mass Readings

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us a very important truth: that in every age, the Gospel encounters opposition. We see this in Jesus’ own life, since the opposition to him and his ministry conspires to have him crucified. They actually succeed in this, but as we have seen with Easter, their triumph over Jesus is short lived when he rises from the dead. And in every generation of Christians since then, we see the same thing: opposition to the Gospel. In our own day we are seeing a rise in vandalisms of Catholic churches since the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade. Graffiti in these vandalized churches often shows the connection with the Supreme Court ruling.

However, I think it is important for each of us to realize that this opposition to the Gospel is not found solely outside of us in the culture we live in. Instead, we find opposition to the Gospel rising up inside ourselves. We find within ourselves resistance to the commandments of God. We find within ourselves temptations to sin. We find ourselves falling into sin. We may not be able to do much to change the world’s resistance to the Gospel, but we can certainly do much to change our own resistance to the Gospel. And insofar as we do this, we will see that the side effect is that we live happier and more fulfilling lives.

Reflection by Fr. Aquinas Keusenkothen, OSB