Homily: Friday - 4th Week of Easter 2016 - "Do not let your hearts be troubled"

Today’s Gospel reading is one of the most famous and consoling passages, it is chosen quite often for Catholic Funeral Masses.

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled.” Jesus gave these words to us on the night before he died for us and for our salvation. He said these words knowing what would happen in the following few hours and on Good Friday.  His disciples would see him arrested, mocked, tortured, crucified, and killed.  “Don’t let your hearts be troubled” as you witness these things. How could their hearts not be troubled, as they saw their Lord expire and breath his last? Yet he wished for them, not to let the sufferings which they witnessed obscure that for which he suffered.

Why is this reading chosen so often by grieving family members for Catholic funeral Masses? When overwhelmed with tremendous grief, our faith pierces through grief, transforms grief. Faith helps us to gaze into the promised eternity, where every tear will be wiped away—where the promises of Our Lord will be fulfilled, promises of eternal life and resurrection.

Faith enabled Paul and Barnabas in our first reading, to embrace the hardship of evangelization: the anxiety of unknown places & unknown peoples, physical dangers, mental exhaustion—all of it is worth it, because when our earthly labors and earthly sufferings are done for God, we will reap eternal reward.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled”. These words of Jesus are not a suggestion, but a command—for his disciples and for all of us.  We are to view all of our earthly sufferings through the eyes of faith, that this world is but a preparation for the next. We are to have untroubled hearts when we face our own serious illnesses, when we see loved ones pass away, when earthly leaders persecute us, when we are called upon to spread the Gospel to unknown people in unknown lands. 

Having “untroubled hearts” does not mean we have to be Pollyanna, ignoring the corruption in the world, or the divisions in the Church, pretending like our suffering isn’t that bad. We aren’t to view the world through rose-colored glasses, but through the lens of faith, which sees all things—our sufferings, our trials, even earthly death—from the divine perspective.

Not naïve optimism, but faith, preserves our hearts from becoming overwhelmed by earthly suffering. Faith, orients us to eternity, helping us even to embrace suffering, like Our Lord, for the good of others, enabling us to observe all he commands, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.