Fifth Sunday of Easter: We Need The Church

A few days ago, Pope Francis said something shocking.

In fact, if the world paid a little more attention what he said, he might find himself in the middle of a controversy.

What Pope Francis said, on his feast day - the feast of St. George - was that "it is not possible to find Jesus outside the Church."

That's a bold and clear statement. It's also a true statement.

The Church is where we find Jesus. Not because we're an exclusive club who think we have all the answers, but because Jesus set it up that way.

We've been hearing from the book of Acts in our first reading since Easter; and in it, we've witnessed the Church growing up. The Apostles are preaching, the Gospel of Jesus is spreading. In these most recent readings, we've seen the ministry of Paul and Barnabas as they began the work of sharing the good news with the gentiles, the world outside the people of Israel.

And what we see is the building up of a community. Paul and Barnabas don't just leave some pamphlets and say, "Ok, go be good Christians." They have a personal encounter with the people and they bring them into this family of the Church. They appoint elders for the communities.

That goes against a certain mindset in our culture: the mindset that everything is about me. It's a mindset of "me and Jesus." I'll be a Christian but I don't want to have to deal with "organized religion." I don't want to have to deal with an actual Church.

Do you know what's so hard about being a part of a community?

There are people there.

People who may disagree with me. People who are richer than me or poorer than me. People from the other political party. People who I don't like.

To quote the great Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor, "Here comes everybody!"

Being part of the community of the Church can be a struggle because sometimes we humans get on each others' nerves; but Jesus didn't want it any other way. He called together the Apostles to evangelize the world and look at them: the fought, they argued, they disagreed.

But despite our differences, in the Church we find unity - we say it in the Creed:  "I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church."
We overcome our differences and our natural human tendency to bother each other by following Jesus' command to the Apostles at the Last Supper which we heard in our gospel today:

As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.This is how all will know that you are my disciples,if you have love for one another.

Our love for one another should point us out as followers of Jesus.

According to Jesus, that is the way that people will know we are Christians. Christ loves us and so we must love each other. That's the Church.

Our participation in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, our prayer and our worship build us up into this family that shares in the love of God. That's why it's vital to come to worship together every week.

Now, I know I'm preaching to the choir, in a way: you're all here. You're joining together as the Church in St. Clairsville along with the Church all over the world and the Church in heaven to worship our God. It's a glimpse of what John describes in the book of Revelation as the "new Jerusalem," the bride of Christ, coming down from Heaven at the end of time.

In the end, the Church will be with her savior. We as a community and as individuals will live with God forever.

- but to get there, we need to spend our time on earth growing in love: love of God and love of our neighbor. Living in the family of the Church with other imperfect people helps us to grow in that love.

We're not here because we decided to form a club, we're here because God called all of us, through our baptism, to be part of His family.

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