Saint Gertrude Parish - Lasne
May 25, 2025
On this page you will find:
The readings for Mass, the Mass leaflet with the choice of hymns
A sample universal prayer available for download , in PDF and editable Word formats.
A meditation on the Sunday Gospel , a spiritual text and a commentary by Marie-Noëlle Thabut
6th Sunday of Easter
I leave you in peace.
I give you my peace;
This is not the way of the world
that I give it to you.
John 14:27
Readings from the Mass
Mass leaflet
Universal Prayer
Lectio Divina
Consult this page for a prayerful preparation for the liturgy and then read the meditations below.
Meditation by Pope Francis
Regina Cæli
Saint Peter's Square
Sunday, May 22, 2022
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus, bidding farewell to his disciples at the Last Supper, says, almost as if making a final testament, "Peace I leave with you." And he immediately adds, "Peace I give you" (Jn 14:27). Let us pause on these brief words. First and foremost, "Peace I leave with you." Jesus takes his leave with words that express affection and serenity, but he does so at a time that is anything but serene. Judas has gone out to betray him, Peter is about to deny him, and almost all are on the verge of abandoning him: the Lord knows this, and yet he makes no reproaches, he uses no harsh words, he makes no harsh pronouncements. Instead of showing agitation, he remains kind to the very end. A proverb says that we die as we have lived. The last hours of Jesus are indeed like the essence of his entire life. He experiences fear and pain, but does not succumb to resentment and protest. He does not give in to bitterness, he does not unleash his emotions, he is not irritable. He is at peace, a peace that comes from his gentle heart, filled with trust. It is from this peace that Jesus leaves us. Because we cannot give others peace if we do not have it within ourselves. We cannot give peace if we are not at peace.
"This is my peace I give you": Jesus demonstrates that gentleness is possible. He embodied it precisely at the most difficult moment; and he desires that we, too, who are heirs to his peace, behave in this way. He wants us to be gentle, open, available to listen, capable of defusing quarrels and weaving harmony. This means bearing witness to Jesus, and it is worth more than a thousand words and many sermons. The witness of peace. Let us ask ourselves if, in the places where we live, we, disciples of Jesus, behave in this way: do we release tensions, do we extinguish conflicts? Are we also in conflict with someone, always ready to react, to explode, or do we know how to respond with non-violence, do we know how to respond with gestures and words of peace? How do I react? Let each one ask themselves this.
Of course, this gentleness is not easy: how difficult it is, at every level, to defuse conflicts! Here, Jesus' second statement comes to our aid: "My peace I give you." Jesus knows that we are not able to preserve peace on our own, that we need help, a gift. Peace, which is our commitment, is first and foremost a gift from God. Indeed, Jesus says, "I do not give to you as the world gives" (v. 27). What is this peace that the world does not know and that the Lord gives us? This peace is the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of Jesus. It is the presence of God within us, it is God's "power of peace." It is He, the Holy Spirit, who disarms the heart and fills it with serenity. It is He, the Holy Spirit, who loosens rigidities and calms the temptations to attack others. It is the Holy Spirit who reminds us that beside us are brothers and sisters, not obstacles or adversaries. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us the strength to forgive, to begin again, to start anew, because we cannot do it with our own strength. And it is with Him, with the Holy Spirit, that we become men and women of peace.
Dear brothers and sisters, no sin, no failure, no resentment should discourage us when we earnestly ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit who gives us peace. The more we feel our hearts are troubled, the more nervousness, irritation, and anger we experience within us, the more we must ask the Lord for the Spirit of peace. Let us learn to say each day: “Lord, give me your peace, give me the Holy Spirit.” It is a beautiful prayer. Would you like us to say it together? “Lord, give me your peace, give me the Holy Spirit.” I didn’t quite hear that, again: “Lord, give me your peace, give me the Holy Spirit.” And let us ask for it also for those who live alongside us, for those we meet each day, and for the leaders of nations.
May the Virgin Mary help us to welcome the Holy Spirit so that we may be artisans of peace.
The Gospel for this Sunday
presented to children
(and to those who resemble them)
Interview with Bernadette Dumont
for Magnificat
(I highly recommend subscribing: here )
If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.
says the Lord. My Father will love him,
and we will come to him.
◗ So what is this word that Jesus asks us to keep?
When Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word,” his word is his entire Gospel, the Good News he proclaimed during the three years of his public ministry. But be careful, keeping it means keeping it in your heart to put it into practice. Therefore, in keeping with last Sunday's Gospel, we can say that the essence of his word is his new commandment, the commandment of love. Jesus says this explicitly: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me” (John 14:21). In his first letter, Saint John confirms this: “This is the message you have heard from the beginning: that we should love one another” (1 John 3:11).
◗ And suddenly, Jesus summons his Father and the Holy Spirit to authenticate his will…
Here again, the First Letter of Saint John offers us a privileged perspective on this Sunday's Gospel. It tells us that the will of God, our Father, is that "we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us." And he adds: "Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And this is how we know that he abides in us: by the Spirit he has given us" (1 John 3:23-24). This means that, just as Jesus manifested the Father's love in his life on earth, we must, in deeds and in truth, manifest the love of Jesus in our lives.
◗ And the Holy Spirit, who is it? What is its role?
We believe in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three persons love one another so deeply, are so perfectly united in love, that they are one: our God is the One because our God is Love. The Holy Spirit is precisely the one who personifies the communion of love between the Father and the Son. At the beginning of Mass, the celebrant greets us thus: “The grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you always.” The good news that Jesus now reveals to us is that he came not only to save us, but also to have us adopted into this “Trinitarian family” which is our God: Jesus is our brother, his Father is our Father, and the Holy Spirit will enable us to live in their communion of love, which is the very life of God. From then on, we abide in God, and God abides in us.
Catechist and author of children's books, Bernadette Dumont is a mother and grandmother.
Better understanding the Gospel
with Marie-Noëlle Thabut
Better understanding the Gospel
with Marie-Noëlle Thabut
GOSPEL — according to Saint John 14:23-29
At that time, Jesus said to his disciples:
23 “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.
25 I am telling you this while I am still with you;
26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you.
27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
28 You heard what I said to you: I am going away, and I am coming back to you. If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.
29 I have told you these things now, before they happen, so that when they do happen you will believe.”
THE PASSOVER OF JESUS
We are in the very last hours of Jesus' life, just before the Passion: the hour is grave… we sense the anguish of his final moments; we read it between the lines, since, on several occasions, Jesus speaks words of reassurance to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid”; at the beginning of this chapter, he had already said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (v. 1). This long discourse of Jesus was interrupted by several questions from the apostles: questions that revealed their anguish, their incomprehension. But, curiously, he, on the contrary, remains very serene: here, as throughout the Passion, John describes Jesus as supremely free; it is he who reassures his disciples, and not the other way around! He himself announces what is going to happen: “I have told you these things now before they happen, so that when they do happen you will believe.” Not only does he know what is going to happen, but he accepts it; He makes no attempt to evade them. He announces his departure, but presents it as the condition and the beginning of a new presence: “I am going away and I am coming back to you.” This “departure” will later be interpreted, after the Resurrection, as the Passover of Jesus; the same John says in chapter 13: “Before the Passover festival, knowing that the hour had come for him to depart from this world to the Father…” John deliberately uses this word (pass), because we know that Passover means “passage”: by this, John wants to draw a parallel between the Passion of Jesus and the liberation from Egypt, which was reenacted at each Jewish Passover festival. And so, since it is a question of liberation, this departure should not plunge the apostles into sadness: “If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father.” The disciples were stunned by this: they saw their master, the one they had followed for several months, now a man hunted by the religious authorities—that is, the leaders, those trusted in matters of God, which is indeed the essence of life for a Jew. These authorities, acting in God's name, were Jesus's fiercest opponents. And they had good reason, it must be said: for centuries, the great discovery of the chosen people, revealed by God himself, was that God is one! "Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God, the Lord is one." And all the prophets had striven to maintain this faith against all odds. And this one God is both the God close to humanity AND the Wholly Other God, the Holy One. Jesus, for his part, preaches a God close to humanity, and especially to the most vulnerable… But he claims to be God himself: in the eyes of the Jews, this is blatant blasphemy, an offense against the one true God, the Wholly Other God. In our reading for this Sunday, Jesus emphasizes the bond that unites him to his Father: named five times in these lines! And he even goes so far as to speak in the plural: “If anyone loves me… WE will come to him and make our home with him.”
WHOEVER HAS SEEN ME HAS SEEN THE FATHER
And this isn't the first time he's said something like this: a little earlier, when Philip asked him, "Show us the Father," he calmly replied, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Here, he says again, "The word that you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me." In other words, he is the Father's Envoy, he is the Father's word. And from now on, it is the Holy Spirit who will make this word understood and who will keep it in the disciples' memory. The key to this text may lie in the word "word": the word appears several times here, and if we refer to what precedes it, there is no possible doubt; this word that must absolutely be kept is the "commandment of love": "love one another," which is tantamount to saying, "serve one another." And to make himself perfectly clear, Jesus himself gave a very concrete example by washing his disciples' feet. Being faithful to his word, then, simply means serving others. And, ultimately, today's reading, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word," can therefore be translated as: If anyone loves me, he will serve his brothers and sisters… Whoever does not love me will not serve others… Conversely, then, if I understand correctly, whoever does not serve others is not faithful to the word of Christ! And, consequently, we better understand the role of the Holy Spirit: it is he who teaches us to love, he reminds us of the commandment of love. But why does Jesus call him the Advocate? We know very well that we don't need an advocate against God! The Holy Spirit is our “Advocate,” because, truly, He protects us, but from ourselves… For our greatest misfortune is forgetting that the essential thing is to love one another, to serve one another. Very concretely, we saw the Advocate at work in the first community at the time of what was called the First Council of Jerusalem (which was the subject of our first reading): you remember the difficulties of coexistence between Christians of Jewish origin and Christians of Gentile origin. Clearly, the Spirit of love inspired the disciples of Christ with the desire to maintain unity at all costs.