Fifth Sunday after Easter

Yet four days, and our risen Jesus, whose company has been so dear and precious to us, will have disappeared from the earth. This fifth Sunday after Easter seems to prepare us for the separation. In a week’s time, we shall begin the long series of Sundays which are to pass before He returns to judge the world. This is a grief to the Christian; for he knows that he will not see his Saviour until after this life, and he feels something of the sorrow the apostles had at the last Supper, when Jesus said to them: ‘Yet a little while, and ye shall not see Me.’[1]

But, after His Resurrection, what must these privileged men have felt, when they perceived, as we do, that this beloved Master was soon to leave them! They had, so to speak, been living with Jesus glorified; they had experienced the effects of His divine condescension and intimacy; they had received from His lips every instruction they needed for the fulfilment of His will, that is, for founding on earth the Church He had chosen as His spouse. These happy forty days are fast drawing to a close. The apostles will then be deprived of Jesus’ visible presence, even to the end of their lives.

We, too, shall feel something of their sadness, if we have kept ourselves united to our holy mother the Church. From the very first day, when she recommenced, for our sakes, the ecclesiastical year, during which all the mysteries of our redemption, from the birth of our Emmanuel even to His triumphant Ascension into heaven, were to be celebrated,—have not we also been living in company with her Jesus, our Redeemer? And now that He is about to close the sweet intercourse which these seasons and feasts have kept up between Himself and us, are not our feelings very much like those of the apostles?

But there is one creature on earth, whom Jesus is leaving, and whose feelings at the approaching separation we cannot attempt to describe. Never had there been a heart so submissive to the will of her Creator; but, at the same time, there never was any creature so severely tried as she had been. Jesus would have His Mother’s love still increase; He therefore subjects her to the separation from Himself. Moreover, He wishes her to co-operate in the formation of the Church, for He has decreed that the great work shall not be achieved without her. In all this, Jesus shows how tenderly He loves His blessed Mother: He wishes her merit to be so great, that He may justly give her the brightest possible crown, when the day of her own ascension into heaven comes.

The heart of this incomparable Queen is not, indeed, to be again transfixed with a sword of sorrow: it is to be consumed by a love so intense that no language could describe it. Under the sweet, yet wearing, fire of this love, Mary is at length to give way, just as fruit falls from the tree, when its ripeness is complete, and the tree has nothing more to give it. But, during these last hours of Jesus’ presence, what must such a Mother have felt, who has had but forty days to enjoy the sight and the caresses of her glorified and divine Son? It is Mary’s last trial; and when her Jesus tells her of His wish that she should remain in exile, she is ready with her favourite answer: 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord! Be it done to me according to Thy word!’ Her whole life has been spent in doing God’s will; it was this that made her so great in His eyes, and so dear to His Heart. A holy servant of God, who lived in the seventeenth century, and was favoured with the most sublime revelations, tells us that it was left to Mary’s choice, either to accompany her divine Son to heaven, or to remain some years longer upon the earth to assist the infant Church; and that she chose to defer her entrance into eternal bliss, in order to labour, as long as it was God’s good pleasure, in the great work which was so closely connected with the glory of her Son, and so essential to the salvation of us her adopted children.

If this generous devotedness raised the co-operatrix of our salvation to the highest degree of sanctity, by giving completeness to her mission on earth, we may be sure that Jesus’ love for His Mother was increased by the new proof she thus gave Him of her uniformity with every wish of His sacred Heart. He repaid her, as He well knew how to do, for this heroic self-sacrifice, this prompt submission to His designs which destined her to be, here on earth, as the Church calls her, 'Queen of the apostles,’ and a sharer in their labours.

During these His last few hours on earth, our Lord’s affection for His apostles and disciples seemed to be redoubled. For several of them, the separation was to be a long one. The beloved disciple, John, was not to enjoy the company of his divine Master till more than fifty years had elapsed. It was to be thirty before the cross would carry Peter to Him who had entrusted to his keeping the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Magdalene, the fervent Magdalene, would have to wait the same length of time. But no one murmured at the divine appointment: they all felt how just it was, that Jesus, now that He had so fully established the faith of His Resurrection, should enter into His glory.[2]

On the very day of His Resurrection, our Saviour bade the disciples go into Galilee, for that there He would meet them. As we have already seen, they obeyed the order, and seven among them were favoured by Jesus’ appearing to them on the banks of Lake Genesareth: it is the eighth of the manifestations mentioned in the Gospel. The ninth also took place in Galilee. Our Lord loved Galilee: it gave Him the greater number of His disciples, it was Mary and Joseph’s country, and it was there that He Himself passed so many years of His hidden life. Its people were simpler and better than those of Judea; and this was another attraction. St. Matthew tells us, that the most public of all Jesus’ manifestations, after His Resurrection,—the tenth in reality, and the ninth mentioned by the evangelists,—took place on a hill in this same district.[3]

According to St. Bonaventure, and the learned and pious Denis the Carthusian, this hill was Mount Thabor, the same that was honoured by the mystery of the transfiguration. Upwards of five hundred of Jesus’ disciples were assembled there, as we learn from St. Paul:[4] they were mostly inhabitants of Galilee, had believed in our Lord during His three years of public life, and merited to be witnesses of this new triumph of the Nazarene. Jesus showed Himself to them, and gave them such certitude with regard to His resurrection, that the apostle appeals to their testimony in support of this fundamental mystery of our faith.

Further than this, we know of no other manifestations made by our Saviour after His resurrection. We know that He gave order to His disciples to repair to Jerusalem, where they were to see Him once more before His Ascension. Let us, during these few days, follow the disciples to Jerusalem. Faithless city! how often has Jesus sought to gather together her children, as the hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and she would not![5] He is about to re-enter her walls; but she is not to know it. He will not shew Himself to her, but only to those that love Him; and after this He will depart in silence, never to return until He comes to judge them that have not known the time of their visitation.

In the Greek Church, the fifth Sunday after Easter is called the Sunday of the man born blind, because her Gospel for the day contains the history of that miracle of our divine Lord. She also calls it Episozomene, which is one of the names given by the Greeks to the mystery of the Ascension, the feast of which is kept with them, as with us, during the course of this week.

- From Dom Prosper Gueranger's commentary on the Fifth Sunday after Easter in The Liturgical Year.