Following is the prepared text from Bishop Olmsted’s homily for the sixth Sunday of Easter.

May 10, 2020

“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” John 14:18

He was nine years of age when his mother died — only 3 weeks before his First Holy Communion. His father, being a man of faith and prayer, provided him a good example of how to deal with his Mom’s death. They commended her to God and to the loving intercession of Mary. They continued to live their Catholic faith and to pray together in their home, with perhaps an even closer bond of love as father and son.

At Mass and at home, they “sanctified Christ as Lord in their hearts” (1Pet 3:15). However, when his father died, eleven years later, the grief was far more intense for this young man, whose only brother and sister had already preceded him in death. When he arrived home from a hard day’s work at a rock quarry and found his father dead in bed, he spent the whole night kneeling beside the dead body, pouring out his grief to God. Even though a friend came that night to be with him, he later wrote, “I never felt so alone.”

For the next year and a half, he dealt with this keen sorrow of being alone. He still worked in the quarry, continued to spend time with friends and to engage in theater;,and his time in prayer grew more intense. Gradually, despite his homeland being crushed by Nazi occupation and some narrow escapes from death, he came to a new awareness of the Fatherhood of God. The words of Jesus came alive for him in deeply personal ways, such as (Luke 12:4ff), “…my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more… Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.”

Day by day, a new sense of mission began to grow in his heart. In the late summer of 1942, Karol Wojtyla applied for the seminary and was accepted as a candidate for the priesthood in Krakow, Poland. He knew from personal experience that he could trust Jesus’ promises, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18). “Be not afraid!”

Many years later, Karol Wojtyla, now known as Pope John Paul II, wrote a “Letter to Young People,” beginning with the words of the first pope, St. Peter, who said (1 Pet 3:16), “Always be ready to give…a reason for your hope.” The reason for Wojtyla’s hope was his personal experience of the love of Jesus and the fatherhood of God.

During his personal struggle with loneliness, he came to a new sense of Jesus as His Redeemer, the One who rescues us from darkness and brings us into His own wonderful light, the Beloved Son who came into this world to free us from being orphans, and who told us, “When you pray, say “Father.”

Dear brothers and sisters, dear sons and daughters in Christ, our identity and mission from God is to be “His beloved children.” He created us to be His adopted sons and daughters. As Pope Francis insists, “This is in our DNA.” This “filial relationship,” designed by God from the beginning, was ruined by Satan but was restored by Jesus when He offered His life for us on the altar of the Cross.

Through Jesus, you and I, too, can enter the fullness of life as God’s children through Baptism and faith. Our communion with Him is restored in the Sacrament of Confession and renewed in the Eucharist. The Holy Spirit enables us to “sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts.” What a blessing it is to welcome Jesus as the Lord of our life, and to consider Him to be worthy of all our love.

No matter what you are facing in your life today, even if you feel all alone like Karol Wojtyla did,the night that his father died, savor these words of Jesus, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18). “Be not afraid.”

Notice Jesus does not say, “You will never feel like an orphan.” He does not say: “You will never experience loneliness.” No, He says, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”

Soon after Jesus said these words at the Last Supper, the Apostles scattered like frightened sheep. Humiliated by their infidelity, they were walking on the edge of despair. But Jesus came back to them through His Resurrection, which conquered sin and death—the principal causes of orphaning. Jesus also came back to them through the gift of the Holy Spirit, whom He promised to send in His Name (Jn 14:16), “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you always.” The Holy Spirit unites us with Christ and enables us to enter into a new bond of love with Him. What an immense blessing to know deep within us that we are dearly loved by God.

In his first encyclical as pope, St. John Paul II wrote (#10),

“Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. …The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly …must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. …If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself.”

Tomorrow, May 18, is the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Karol Wojtyla, St. John Paul II. Like him, may you and I not be afraid to let Jesus be the center of our lives, our Lord and Redeemer.