Trong bài đọc thứ Nhất, chúng ta thấy, ông Appôlô là người có học thức và có được cách ăn nói hùng hồn. Hai điều kiệm rất quan trọng cho người đàn ông trong thế giới thời cổ đại. Ông đã được Chúa Thánh thần nung đốt trong niềm tin vào Chúa Giêsu và rao giảng to dân ngoại về Chúa Giêsu Kitô. Mặc dầu thế, sự hiểu biết về Tin Mừng và phép rửa của Chúa Kitô của ông chưa được đầy đủ, và ông đã nhờ sự chỉ bảo của bà Priscilla và ông Aquila để ông có thể hiểu biết vể Chúa hơn. Tài hùng biện hay sự thong minh của một người không nhất thiết là đã hiểu biết tất cả về chan lý và sự thật.
Chúng ta không bao giờ có thể nghĩ rằng chúng ta có tất cả những câu trả lời cho mọi thứ, và chúng ta nên cởi mở vả sẵn sang, khiêm thốn để hõi hỏi nơi những người khác. Điều này cũng sẽ giúp rất nhiều cho chúng ta để chúng ta có thể thừa nhận những sai lầm và sửa sai những ý kiến của chúng ta. Không một ai có thể hiểu biết mọi thứ và có tất cả những câu trả lời cho những thắc mắc của con người.
Trong bữa ăn tối sau cùng, Chúa Giêsu nói với các môn đệ rằng ngày sẽ đến Chúa Giêsu sẽ phải trở về với Chúa Cha, Ngày đó Ngài sẽ ban Chúa Thánh Linh xuông trên những ngưòi theo và Tin vào Ngài. Họ có thể cầu xin Thiên Chúa bất cứ điều gì họ cần một cách trực tiếp trong danh Ngài . Ngài đã kêu gọi họ nên trưởng thành trong tâm linh hơn là phụ thuộc vào người khác như trẻ con hoặc thụ động.
Tất cả chúng ta đã được Chúa Giêsu ban trao cho mỗi người quyền thiêng liêng như Ngài đã ban cho các môn đệ. Nhưng đây không phải là một việc cho không, biếu không, chúng ta phải thực hiện những điều cam kết với Chúa như các môn đệ để trở thành nhựng môn đệ thực sự của Chúa. Chúa Giêsu sẽ rất vui mừng nếu chúng ta tiếp tục công việc mà Ngài đã bắt đầu. Lạy Chúa, xin ban cho chúng con những hồng ân và ơn Chúa Thánh Thần của Ngài để hướng Dẫn chúng con tiếp tục sống và thực thi ý Chúa.
Apollos was educated and eloquent, both of which were very important in the ancient world. He was on fire for his new-found faith in Jesus. But his understanding was incomplete, and it was up to Priscilla and Aquila to set him straight. Eloquence or brilliance are not the same as truth. We should never think we have all the answers, and we should be open to correction from others. It would also help immensely if we could admit when we are wrong and revise our opinions. No one has all the answers.
At the last supper, Jesus told his disciples that the day was coming when they would no longer ask him for anything. At first, it sounded as if he was cutting them off, but that was not the case. He was speaking of their empowerment. Since Jesus was returning to the Father, he was empowering his followers with the Spirit. They would be able to ask God directly in Jesus’ name for whatever they needed. He was calling them to spiritual maturity rather than childish dependence or passivity.
We are offered the same spiritual empowerment that he gave his disciples. But this is not a free pass — we have to make the commitment to be real disciples. Jesus would be delighted if we continued the work that he began and do even greater things than he.
Lord, grant me the gift of Your Spirit.
“I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father.” John 16:25
When is it that Jesus will speak clearly about the Father? When is that “hour” of which He speaks? First, this “hour” can be understood to be the time after His death, Resurrection and Ascension to Heaven. It is then when the Holy Spirit will come upon them at Pentecost to open their minds to understand all that He has taught with much greater insight and clarity. But in John’s Gospel, the “hour” is also a reference to His death on the Cross. It is His hour of glory, the hour in which the Son of Man saves us through His holy passion. Therefore, this statement of Jesus should be read within the context of Him alluding to His coming passion. Recall that this sermon Jesus gives is part of His “Last Supper Discourse.” It is given immediately prior to Jesus going out to the Garden of Gethsemane to be arrested.
When we consider this “hour” to be the passion and death of Jesus on the Cross, we should be aware of the fact that His act of dying is not only a saving act of redemption, it is also one of the clearest ways in which He speaks about His Father in Heaven. Jesus’ suffering and death does, in fact, reveal the Father to the disciples in ways that His “figures of speech” could not reveal. Jesus’ veiled language was spoken as truth but as truth that could not be fully communicated. However, Jesus’ freely embraced suffering and death does clearly communicate the Father in the most profound way possible. The Cross is pure love, and the Father is pure love. Jesus’ death on the Cross in obedience to the will of the Father reveals to all that the Father loves us so much that He was willing to sacrifice His only begotten Son so that if we but believe in Him, we will inherit eternal life.
The message of the Cross is a true teaching about the love of the Father. It’s a teaching that took place through an act of the most pure and sacrificial love imaginable. The Cross was Jesus speaking “clearly about the Father” insofar as it reveals the depth of the Father’s love for all humanity. If you find this difficult to understand, then you are not alone. The disciples themselves struggled with this. That is why they ultimately needed the Holy Spirit to come upon them to open their minds. We too need the Holy Spirit if the veil is to be lifted and we are to comprehend this most powerful message of God’s infinite love.
Reflect, today, upon Jesus’ burning desire to lift the veil of His teaching and to reveal to you, clearly, the depth of the Father’s love for you. Allow the Holy Spirit to open your mind to this revelation as it is given through the Crucifixion. Pray for that gift. Listen to Jesus tell you He desires to give you this understanding and then await the grace you need to see and understand the very heart of the Father and His divine love for you.
My precious Jesus, Your hour of glory upon the Cross is the clearest and fullest revelation of the Father’s love. On the Cross, You show us all how deeply we are loved by You and Your Father in Heaven. Please do open my mind, dear Lord, to all You wish to reveal to me, so that as I come to know You, I will also come to know Your Father in Heaven. Jesus, I trust in You.
Opening Prayer: Lord God, I thank you today for introducing me through your Son and Spirit into your own divine life. I do not in any way deserve this great gift and yet you generously offer it to me out of love. I pray that all people may enjoy the gift of divine life.
1. Praying to the Father in Union with Jesus and Animated by the Spirit: In the Gospel of John, Jesus focuses his Farewell Discourse on the disciples’ life after his Resurrection from the dead and his Ascension into Heaven. By reading the discourse during Easter, the Church looks forward to the celebration of Pentecost and the sending of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has spoken at length about the consoling activity of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:7-14) and how the disciple’s temporary grief will become lasting joy. They will be filled with the supernatural joy of divine communion. “Through the Holy Spirit, the risen Jesus will draw his disciples to share in his communion with the Father, and an indication of this new relationship will be their praying to the Father in Jesus’ name” (Martin and Wright, The Gospel of John, 272). When the disciples pray in union with Jesus, their prayers will be answered. This is because it will not be a selfish prayer or a petition for something outside of God’s loving will. It will be a prayer that the Father’s will be done (Matthew 6:10). “By being united to Jesus and animated by the Spirit of love and obedience, the disciples will know joy that is perfect and complete, a joy that comes only from participating in the divine communion” (Martin and Wright, The Gospel of John, 272).
Opening Prayer: Dear Jesus, as the Church prepares to celebrate your Ascension into Heaven, allow me to listen to your parting words with a profound desire to treasure them in my heart. Enable me to enter into the Father’s heart and practice childlike confidence in his love for me.
Whatever You Ask the Father in My Name, He Will Give You: Throughout his public ministry, Jesus spoke of his relationship with the Father from a place of total security in the Father’s love. A man like us, he lived his life in loving trust in the Father and in absolute reference to him. He experienced unshakeable certainty that the Father listened to his every prayer and would not deny him anything he asked. In the last hours of his life, when every word counted, what was foremost on his mind was his desire that his beloved Apostles might discover the joy of absolute reliance on the Father whom he had always known. He invited them to “cast out their nets” in faith, to dare to entrust their deepest needs and desires to their heavenly Father in his name.
Ask and You Will Receive, So That Your Joy May Be Complete: It is as though Jesus were begging us to ask him to grant our hearts’ deepest longings. His heart longs to give to us. He has created us capable of a relationship with him, and it is his greatest joy that we should choose this relationship. He loves to see his children finding and choosing the greatest source of joy that our hearts could ever find. He opens his heart wide and cries to us, “seek, beg, ask… and you will receive.” Our asking is the way we respond to God’s love, our heart’s reaching out in faith and trust, our conscious decision to rely on God rather than ourselves. And when we open our hearts in this way, asking God to lead us to the fulfillment of our deepest desires, we can be sure that he will lead us to the fullness of joy in him.
The Father Himself Loves You: At the Last Supper, as he spent those last, intimate moments with his Apostles, Jesus’ heart burned with the desire to share that which was dearest to him with those he loved. One of those things most on his heart was his desire that his own might know the Father as he did, that he might be able to transmit to them his unshakeable trust in his Father’s love. Gathered around the table in that upper room, Jesus shared with them just how precious they were to the Father. He wanted them to know that because they were his own, the Father looked upon them and saw his Son, loving them with the same love with which he loved Jesus.
Conversing with Christ: Dear Jesus, thank you for revealing the Father to me and for showing me the unthinkable dimensions of his love for me. Grant me the faith to act on your words and entrust my life and my deepest desires to the Father’s care. I want to discover what it means to live in childlike trust and to rely on God as my Father, not only in word but also in deed. Teach me, divine Master.
Resolution: Lord, today by your grace, I will present my most pressing needs and desires to the Father, asking him in your name to take charge of those areas of my life which it is hardest for me to entrust to him.
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