TEXT: Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2026
May 3, 2026 Father De Celles Homily
5th Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2026
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
There are certain words that are very popular today
that can be very confusing to Christians,
words like equality, diversity, tolerance and choice.
They confuse Christians because these are words
which have profound and important meanings in the Christian context.
But nowadays they are most commonly used in a non-Christian context
as synonymous for the word “indifference.”
And that’s not at all what these words mean in the Christian tradition.
All this goes to show a more profound underlying idea popular in our world today,
the idea that there is no absolute truth,
no one way to be or act,
no one kind of life to live,
and no one fundamental meaning to life.
That is what the Church calls and condemns as “indifferentism.”
And this is not Christian.
Being Christian means being in unity with Christ and His teaching.
In today’s Gospel, Christ tells us He himself is
“the way and the truth and the life.”
Everybody is looking for the truth.
Everybody wants to know the right way to do things.
And everyone wants to know what kind of life they should live.
If they didn’t, no one would have high blood pressure,
or endure any kind of stress whatsoever.
No one would worry about doing the right thing,
not even the right thing to get what they want,
much less the morally right thing.
No one would care about much of anything.
The Gospel text today is taken from St. John’s account of the Last Supper.
Imagine the context:
Jesus is seated with His best friends, the twelve apostles,
and they are all enjoying themselves.
It had been a triumphant week for Jesus:
Just a few days before, people from all over Judea
who had gathered in Jerusalem for the holiest feast of the year
had poured into the streets to greet Jesus as the Messiah.
But Jesus knew their happiness would soon be brutally crushed
when they saw Him dragged away and hung on a cross.
And when that happens, He knows that they will be sorely tempted
to look for a new way, a new truth and a new life.
But that’s the last thing Jesus wants.
These are the men who are to spread His message to all the world.
Jesus tells them,
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God; have faith also in me.”
But Jesus knows that later that night their faith will be shaken.
They will be tempted to revert to the Judaism of the Old Testament,
clinging to God, but losing faith that Jesus was sent by that God.
So He says to them and He says to us,
“You have faith in God; have faith also in me.”
Jesus knows the apostles will lose faith in Him when He’s crucified because He knew that their faith in Him was already weak.
This is why Philip goes on to ask Him,
“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”
Philip is asking the question that most people
eventually ask when they encounter Christ and His teachings.
He’s saying:
Why should I accept this when You’re just a man?
A man like any other men.
Oh, maybe smarter and holier than everyone else.
Maybe You are a great prophet and God the Father does speak to You.
But You’re just a man.
Show us something that makes You special.
So Philip says, “Show us the Father, and that would be enough.”
I can just see Jesus–at the same time frustrated and bemused.
I picture Him with this look of exasperation on His face,
shaking His head, saying:
“Philip, have I been with you for so long a time
and you still do not know me?
Jesus goes on to tell Him,
“Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”
Jesus Christ is not just an ordinary man: He’s also God.
_____
Do you remember the words of Genesis
that tell us God created man in His own image?
He created us to be like Him.
That’s not saying that He’s like some proud papa
who wants his children to follow in his footsteps.
What it means is that He created us in a such a way
that we can only be who we are when we are like Him.
Think of a Steinway piano.
You buy one and put it in your home and everyone admires it.
But no one plays it—it just sits there, like some expensive decoration.
It will never really be the glorious instrument it is
until it an accomplished pianist sits at it and fills the house with beautiful music.
And the same with you.
You are not God, but you are created in the likeness of God.
And you will never be fully yourself until you strive to live like God.
As St John Paul II used to say so often, “Man, be who you are!”
To be fully human is to be like God.
But what, in truth, is God really like?
In what way does He act?
What sort of life does He lead?
Many would say that it’s impossible for human beings to know any of this
–it’s not like God came into the world
and showed us His way, His truth and His life.
But He did!
“Philip…whoever has seen me has seen the Father!”
You can follow Mohammed, Buddha, Marx
or whatever self-proclaimed prophet you want
…but who are they but mere mortal men?
They may understand some of God’s truth, way, and life.
But Jesus Christ is the way of God!
Jesus Christ is the truth of God!
Jesus Christ is the life of God!
Because Jesus is God!
Indifferentism is growing in the world today.
Many say that it’s wrong to claim that any one particular group’s idea of the truth
is the absolute truth.
Some even argue that this contest between various religious groups’ different claims
to be sole possessors of the truth
is the root of much of the violence in our history and today
—and so it is something to be overcome and eliminated.
Even many Catholics have come to believe
that all religions are about the same fundamentally
“It’s all the same God, isn’t it?”
There’s some truth in both these errors.
We can’t know all truths on our own.
But God knew that and came into the world as Jesus Christ
to reveal Himself so we could know the truth.
And there’s a radical difference between a person who follows a partial truth,
a directionless way and a meaningless life,
and a person who follows Jesus Christ.
While God made us in His image, He also makes us unique in our own right.
So, we see the important Christian implications of ideas like
equality, diversity, tolerance and choice.
But these ideas become radically opposed to God and His truth
when they become confused with “indifference,”
and when respect for our diversity from each other is nothing more than
a rejection of what makes us like God.
It’s true that it’s difficult to know the truth—difficult, but not impossible,
because as Jesus says,
“For man it is impossible, but not for God; nothing is impossible for God.”
Just as Jesus knew His death would cause a crisis in faith for His apostles,
He also knew it would be even harder on those
100, or 200 or 2000 years later
who would not have known Him when He walked the earth.
And so, at the Last Supper He established two sacraments
to help bridge the divide of years.
First, in the priesthood He established the apostles as His representatives,
whom He would send out with the special grace—His own power—
to teach His people the truth about Him,
to lead them in the way He laid out for them,
and to help them sanctify their lives—
to unite themselves more closely to Jesus.
He further prayed to His Father at that Last Supper,
“[Father,] as you sent me into the world,
so I sent them into the world.”
“I pray not only for them,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
…so that they may be one, as we are one…”
It is absolutely true that many times
these specially chosen ones make personal mistakes
—beginning with the betrayal by Judas and the denial by St. Peter.
But Christ will never abandon the sacrament He established for His Church:
He will never abandon His apostles, bishops and priests.
To do that would be to abandon His whole people.
That night Jesus also left us a second sacrament, the greatest of all, the Eucharist,
where He physically, through sacramental signs, comes into our presence,
and even into our very bodies and persons.
He enters us so that we can really be completely united with Him,
and through Him, with Him and in Him, united to the Father as He is,
“so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us….”
Then, united to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
we can become the persons we were created to be.
____
Words like equality, diversity, tolerance and choice
mean different things to different people.
But some of those meanings are completely opposed to Christ,
and lead to indifferentism.
Through the gift of the teaching of the apostles,
passed down by the gift of the priesthood,
and in the mystery of the Eucharistic Body and Blood of Christ,
may we always remember that there is
only one truth to hold, only one life to unite ourselves to,
and only one way to become the persons God created us to be.
“Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God, and faith also in me…
I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.’”