Homily For Friday Sixth Week of Eastertide Year A, 19th May, 2023

Readings: Acts 18:9-18; Ps.47;  John 16:20-23

Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Emenike Onyia

 

BE PATIENT FOR YOUR SORROWS WILL SOON TURN TO JOY

 

Often times when we reflect on the ugly events that happens around us which have caused us deep sorrows, we wonder why God who is so good and all powerful permits such event to happen to us. Sometimes we felt we should have avoided such sorrowful event, hence, we complain and even doubt  the power of God whom we thought will have helped us overcome the evil.

 

Thus, Jesus knowing that his disciples will surely find themselves in this kind of situation said to them in our Gospel passage today,  ‘I tell you most solemnly, you will be weeping and wailing while the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy…and that joy no one shall take from you. When that day comes, you will not ask me any questions.’

 

Here Jesus is talking about the sorrows the disciples will experience when he goes away after his passion and death, and the joy they will experience his at his resurrection. This does not simply means that they shall pass from sorrow to joy, rather the sorrow itself shall become joy because it was the necessary cause of their joy.

 

Jesus illustrates this with the necessary pain and sorrow of child birth and the joy of motherhood. An analogy that better explains the pains and sorrows of the disciples, where their pains and sorrows lead directly to a joy that no one could take away from them. A perfect way of explaining what will happen when they see him again and their deepest pains and sorrows will be transformed into purest joys which no one can take away.

 

These are word of encouragement for the disciples who were afraid of what becomes of them when Jesus is no more physically with them. These same words of encouragement is what St. Paul received from the Lord at Corinth when he was scared of what becomes of him and his mission as we have it in our first reading, when at night the Lord spoke to him in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid to speak out, nor allow yourself to be silenced: I am with you. I have so many people on my side in this city that no one will even attempt to hurt you.’ 

 

Therefore, we are to learn from Jesus, whose path to joy went through the awful agony of the cross, knowing that our own path to eternal joy may first go through the pains of sorrows for our sins. Because for us to find permanent joy in Jesus, we have to die to self which may lead us through a necessary sorrowful moment that will give birth to a permanent joy that is found in the risen Christ.

 

Dear friends, today we are encouraged to be patient in times of sorrows for God knows how to turn our sorrows of the moment into a thing of great joy in the future. The sorrow of contrite hearts today, becomes the gladness of pardoned tomorrow; the sorrow of hardships, intimidation, abandonment, sickness, poverty and even death will become the great joy of success, victory, healing, freedom and eternal life which no one can take away from us.

 

LET US PRAY: Lord God, who restore us to eternal life in the Resurrection of Christ, grant we pray that our present sorrows will be turned into great joy and lead us to eternal victory through Christ our Lord. Amen.

As we begin the novena to the Holy Spirit today, may the Holy Spirit fill our hearts with the joy of His presence.