Homily for Saturday, 2 May 2015– Memorial of St. Athanasius

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 13:44-52; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4; John 14:7-14

Are any of us confused or even troubled by some of Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading today?

Jesus says to Philip, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me”? And he assures us, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.”

Do we not all take Jesus at his word, simply because we trust the words of our Lord? And yet this indwelling of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father is deeply mysterious to us. To understand this mystery was one of the greatest struggles of the early Church. St. Athanasius, fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, in Egypt, whose feast we celebrate today, was exiled from Alexandria five times and spent most of his life trying to explain how Christ could be both fully God and fully human. How could God the Father be in this man, Jesus, and the Son be in the Father?

And how is it possible for us to do “greater works” than those of Jesus, the Son of God? I think an answer to this question lies in our first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles. We hear that after Paul, Barnabas, and the other Apostles were rejected and persecuted by many Jewish leaders (let us be careful here: Many Jews, the first to hear the Word of God, did accept Jesus as God), they took Christ’s Gospel to the Gentiles; pagan Greeks. And Acts says that, in Iconium, the Apostles “were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus no longer physically walks this earth. He has ascended to heaven. Yet he has given us his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives in us and is the inspiration for all our good works; the life breath behind our faith and our works. One of the gifts of God the Holy Spirit is joy. When we act with joy, even in small works of kindness; of service; of love, our world takes notice. Not only other Christians but people of other faiths or no faith can feel joy; can and do experience love. This is, I think, what Jesus means when he says to us, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.”

Individually, we can do very little. Even as believers in Christ, we are limited by our physical bodies. But as a community of faith, we move with and through the Holy Spirit. We can do the works that Jesus did, even limited by his human body while on earth, and even more when we work together.

It is then, as a community of faith, that we get the fullest sense of what Jesus means when he says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” The Father, Son, and Spirit dwell in one another and are one. And God, the Trinity, dwells in us. And we act; we serve; we love with joy, in a way that magnifies even the works of Christ! And so “whoever believes in [Christ] will do the works that [Christ does], and will do greater ones than these.”