All over the world there are people who follow political parties blindly and who vote for these parties in every election. Their loyalty is unquestioned, and even though some of us may wonder about the attraction and ties which bind these followers to their party, the truth is that the party in question offers something to its followers which engages their imagination so that they follow in spite of all the negatives others may point out to them.

The Gospel passage given to us for our meditation today paints the Johannine community in a similar vein. Jesus is very secure in the knowledge that his followers will never abandon him and that no enticements others may propose will get his followers to abandon him. “No one can take them out of my hand.” 

The reason for Jesus’ confidence is evident in the Gospel passage. “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” 

Jesus has presented the Father to his followers. Through him the disciples have come to know The Father and the Father who Jesus makes known is so attractive that no one who comes to know HIM is capable of abandoning HIM.

The experience of the Father has fired the imagination of Jesus’ disciples and because this experience has so fired their imaginations, they will not abandon Jesus and the Father who are one. In so doing they take onto themselves the mission of Jesus, the mission to enable a world of justice, peace and harmony.

The Johannine community is a model for all Christian communities. Like the Johannine community we must come to an experience of Jesus that is so powerful it grips the imagination and does not allow us to abandon HIM and the mission in which he is engaged.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus mediates this experience of the Father through his words and we know that in other parts of the Gospel, the experience of the Father is mediated through the actions of Jesus. “Philip, the person who has seen me has seen the Father.”

Today the experience of Jesus is mediated through the words and actions of people like ourselves. We are now the reflection of Jesus in our world of today so that others must be able to say of us what Jesus said of himself. “To have seen them is to have seen Jesus.”

It is only when we who consider ourselves disciples of Jesus are able to mediate the experience of Jesus to others in a way that fires the imagination, will our communities become communities of unquestionable loyalty to Jesus, in the same way that the Johannine community was loyal to the Father.

The engaging of imagination has always been the way that groups and institutions have been formed and have propagated themselves in the world.

It is also true that when the imagination of the followers is no longer fired up groups and institutions lose a sense of purpose, stagnate and die. Christian communities have always followed that pattern.

When the imagination of their followers is no longer engaged, when they stagnate, it is easy for others to snatch them from the hand of the Lord. When this happens they perish.

Today we thank God for those persons who like Jesus have been able to engage the imagination of others in the struggle for justice in the world. I think of Martin Luther King Jr, Oscar Romero and Mother Teresa.

I think of Fr Gerry Pantin and Sr Rosario Hackshaw. Each of these persons fired the imagination of others and built communities around them which preserve their original vision, and which continue to excite the imagination of followers up to the present.

 In a very true way, like Jesus, they have given new life to their followers. We remember also the small community-based groups, working very silently without much fanfare but living what Easter describes for us as new life. They too will not perish.

Prayer

All powerful and ever-loving God we thank you for the teaching you give us today through this Gospel passage.

We thank you for the many groups throughout our land and throughout the world who are so enthused by your words, your actions and your mission that they will never be taken from your hand.

We thank you that you continue to speak and that we hear your words so that we know where to follow. Continue to inspire us Lord, continue to engage our imagination in new ways to meet the new situations of our time.

Preserve us, Lord, from the temptation of thinking that we know it all and have it all so that we will always listen and be able to discern your voice and so follow where you want to lead us. We ask this in the name of Jesus, the Lord. Amen

Gospel Meditations for April are by Fr Joseph Harris, CSSp, a former rector of the Regional Seminary. Fr Harris is parish priest of St Ann's and the Judicial Vicar of the Archdiocese.