A reading of the holy gospel according to John. Jesus said to his disciples, as the father has loved me, so I have loved you. Live on in my love. You will live in my love if you keep my commandments even as I have kept my father's commandments and live in his love. All this I tell you, that my joy may be yours and that your joy may be complete.
This is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Our blessed lord promised his disciples in this reading from Saint John that they were going to have joy and that it was their joy was going to be complete. Now with that in the back of your head, just think of the readings we've been having from the acts of the apostles, which is an account and the only account we have of the primitive, the earliest days of our of the of Christ's church and the people of his church. Remember, a church is ecclesia, and ecclesia means a group, a crowd, or a community of people.
Now today's reading from the acts of the apostles follows yesterday's reading, and yesterday's followed the day before. This is all a continuous narrative. And I beseech you, get your New Testament and take it. It's only a matter of minutes to read this this particular narrative. That is this problem, this controversy, and it was a deep it was a profound controversy that struck the early church over this matter of dealing with converts from the Gentile world.
What do you do with them? Did they have to become Jews and be then and then to to make themselves, properly fitted for the new way, or did they not have to do that? This was an enormous question, and it and it divided the early church. You see, our blessed lord promised joy. He promised stability to his church.
He promised that it was going to last. He made many promises about it, and I personally think they'll be fulfilled, and I think they have been fulfilled. But in whose definition of those words? What do what does the word joy mean? Now, of course, as soon as I say something like this, somebody says, oh, you're getting involved in semantics, and you know what semantics are.
You know, that's that's the end of the line. I'm supposed to know what semantics are. Well, there's there is tremendously, values here, issues here, which certainly cannot be dismissed as mere semantics, problems of words. But you see the when you when you try to get behind a word to get a definition rather than to be satisfied with a with a word or a sign, for anyone to accuse you of being of fiddling and fooling and wasting your time with somatics is ridiculous because words are nothing but signs and symbols. That's all they are.
They can mean anything you want them to mean. Alice in Wonderland, you know, Dachshund, Lewis Carroll, he has a famous statement on this where Humpty Dumpty is arguing with little Alice, and Alice is a very fine, beautiful little girl, but she has the innocence and the naivete of a little girl. And Humpty Dumpty, of course, has all the wisdom of the world. That's a question of words, And Alice and Humpty Dumpty has been throwing words around like nobody's business. And Alice says to Humpty, you cannot do that with words.
And Humpty Dumpty replies, it's a matter of who's master, that's all. So when you try to get behind a word to a meaning, you're going way beyond what we call semantics. Semantics has to do with signs. When you're dealing with meaning, you're dealing with substance and not shadow. Now when our lord, therefore, uses the word your joy will be complete when he promises his peace, when he tells us we will be happy.
What is he talking about? Because just look at our daily lives. Where do you find these things? If you have in mind a definition of these words, which our blessed lord did not have in mind. When Christ says, my peace be with you.
What's he talking about? Look at the peace the church has had. Look at the peace that the world has had. And Christ said, I came to bring you peace. But he says on more than one occasion, my peace.
What in the world do we mean by peace? Most instances, it's just the absence of war. What do you mean by joy? I don't know. Each one of you sitting in those pews, when I say the word joy, what do you think of?
The last pleasant occasion you had, the last happy, experience of your life, and again, what do we mean by happiness? You see this thing goes on and on. Clive Staple Lewis, you know, when he wrote his well, it's not an autobiography, it's simply a biography of his return from being an a pagan not a pagan, I apologize to the pagans, But from being an atheist, a a very carefully cultivated atheist to a a very fervent believing Christian. And he calls that book surprised by joy. And yet when that man came back from that bus trip to the zoo and fell down on his knees and to admit that there's a supreme being we call God, he said, I was the most miserable man in England.
And he calls his book surprised by joy. Well, he tells us what he means by joy. He says that joy is unfilled desire, which in itself is more satisfying than any other satisfaction. And, of course, Lewis died not so many years ago. But believe it or not, I've been reading, I I don't want you to think I'm not I'm not questioning your credibility that I'm I'm reading a book, but I happen to be reading Dostoevsky's The The Possessed.
That was published in about eighteen seventy two two or something like that. And by Jiminy, I found exactly that thing in Dostoevsky, that definition of joy. This is an English translation. I'm not reading the original Russian today, where he says, almost those words in that translation is by McAndrews. Anyway, joy is unfulfilled desire, I think this is Lewis' view, which in itself is more satisfying than any other desire than any other satisfaction.
Now some people will understand what Lewis is talking about. Some people will understand what Dostoevsky is talking about. A lot of people won't because they look upon joy as the as the fulfillment of desire. So what is our when you go back to this early church, look at the conflicts, look at the controversies, and they're severe. Don't minimize them.
Here you have good fervent Jews, men and women who had given their lives, their commitment, everything to the law, and they had been won over to Christ, but notice they were they there still was no question in their mind. They were still Jews. Now what happens? You have the an influx, hundreds and thousands of these of of Greeks or or Greek speaking people, Gentiles we call them, who are not Jews, who have no traditions of being Jews. Now are you going to take them in?
How are you going to do it? You see, just think of the, try to get that point of view. And this is the amazing part that when when Paul and Barnabas go back to Jerusalem, when they laid the problem before the the the elders and the apostles, that distinction is made, and Peter takes the floor. Notice, that's the way this translation goes. And Peter took the floor.
Who pushed him up there? Who gave him the authority to speak first? Well, I believe Christ had something to say about it. Thou art Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church. Anyway, Peter takes the floor.
That's a fact. Everybody has to admit this. And notice, he he he dissolves the problem. Now merely giving this decision, you know very well didn't didn't eliminate the problem. You can imagine all the feelings and the biases and the prejudices and everything else that's behind this.
But the decision was made by Peter and the apostles and the message is taken back by Paul and Barnabas. So when our blessed lord tells us that our joy is going to be complete, when he tells you I've come to bring you peace, when we wish each other peace during the mass, when we throw the word peace around just as as liberally and generously and and without as much meaning as we do the word love, halt, pause, stop, look, and listen. These are tremendous words not because they're words, but because of what they mean if we give the meaning to these words of Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen.