Homily for the Sunday Mass of May 10, 2026

Sunday, May 10, 2026
6nd Sunday of Easter – Year A
Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

First reading: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17
Psaume : 65 (66),1-3a,4-5,6-7a,16.20
Second reading: 1 Peter 2:3,15-18
Gospel: John 14,15-21

The passage from the Book of Acts of the Apostles reminds us that baptism which
what we received was, as it were, “completed” by this great sacrament of the gift of
the Holy Spirit, which is confirmation. And if there were among us baptized people who
have not yet received the sacrament of confirmation, even if they are 90 years old, I
He urged them to go and see their priest to ask to receive this sacrament.
necessary for the Christian life. For this gift of the Holy Spirit, of which Jesus speaks, is essential.
The Gospel is real, and we need to receive it to be truly “equipped”.
for spiritual warfare.
The apostle Peter invites us to give an account of the hope that is in us.
What is hope? Hope is the hope of Heaven, it is desire
eager to live out what we were created to do, the burning desire to enter into
the fullness of life, the ardent desire for the Kingdom of God, the desire for Heaven which
We know that the path is not death — otherwise we would all have to commit suicide
— the way to Heaven is Jesus.
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus was drawn to Heaven from a very early age. When she...
memory of his painful experience of the last 18 months of his life, when
precisely this Heaven seemed to disappear before her eyes, she said how much this Heaven had
valuable in his eyes:
The hope of going to Heaven filled me with joy. […]
The thought of Heaven was my greatest joy. (Ms C Folio 5, r°)
Does the thought of Heaven dwell in our hearts? Do we desire Heaven? We
Are we preparing to go to Heaven? Are we acting to go to Heaven?
which would still be quite consistent since that's where we are
Given that we were called to life for Heaven? To act for
Going to Heaven is not about bargaining with God: it's about acting to go to Heaven.
It's doing what God wants.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will pray to the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever: the Spirit
of truth.” Keeping the commandments of Jesus, and more broadly keeping the
word, because in this discourse after the Last Supper in Saint John, the Lord uses
these two expressions. And Thérèse meditates a great deal on this call from Jesus to
to keep his word; she tries to understand him. In a letter to her sister
Céline, she writes:
Let [Jesus] take and give whatever He wants, the
Perfection consists in doing one's will, and the soul that surrenders
She who belongs entirely to Him is called by Jesus Himself "His Mother, His
Sister” and her whole family. And elsewhere: “If anyone loves me, He
will keep my word (that is, he will do my will) and my Father
will love him, and we will come to him and make in him our
remains. » Oh Céline! How easy it is to please Jesus, to delight
His heart, you only have to love it without looking at yourself, without too much
to examine its defects… (LT 142 of July 6, 1893)
Yes brothers and sisters, to keep the commandments of Jesus, to keep his
Words, we must love Jesus. Love him for himself, not for what he
It brings us to love him for himself because he is infinitely lovable and to love him
also for everything he has done for each of us. It's for each of us
that Jesus gave his life. And Jesus tells us: whoever has my commandments
And he keeps them; he's the one who loves me. Thérèse continues to explore this question.
And a year later, she wrote to Céline:
Jesus […] said with ineffable tenderness: “If someone
He loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him and us
we will come to him and make our home with him.” Keep the
Jesus' words, that is the sole condition of our happiness, the
Proof of our love for Him. But what is this saying?...
It seems to me that the word of Jesus is Himself… Him, Jesus, the
The Word, the Word of God!… […]
We keep Jesus in our hearts!… (LT 165 of July 7, 1894)
And here we touch upon the very heart of all Christian life.
Authentic: keeping Jesus in your heart. The Christian life is a relationship
in love with Jesus. The Christian life is not about observing the
principles, maintaining a moral compass, all of that is secondary — I'm not saying
Secondary, but second. That which is primary—because we need to be
saved, and there is only one Savior: Jesus — what is first is that we
Let us be in intimate and, I repeat, loving union with Jesus. Keep
Jesus in the heart. And keep Jesus in the heart, keep his word in our
hearts, does not mean that we constantly manage to do everything that is said
Jesus. But precisely, it is because we keep his word in our
hearts, that we are able to say: there, I did not do what Jesus said,
Indeed: there, I cannot manage to do what Jesus says. And that is still his word
who saves me, because she manifests in my life the sin that Jesus wants me to
To save. To keep the word of Jesus, to let this word illuminate our lives so that
we gradually understood how we can better follow, serve,
To love and imitate Jesus. This is how we can honor him in our hearts.
the holiness of the Lord Christ. This is how Peter began the sermon that he
addressed to us at the beginning of the second reading: “Beloved, honor in
"Your hearts, the holiness of the Lord Christ."
Here again, I will look to Thérèse for more information to better understand how
to experience this. Very early on, Thérèse perceived that the vocation of every man and therefore the
Hers is holiness. And she understands this, especially after reading the life of Joanna.
d'Arc, that her glory is not found on earth. She writes:
the Good Lord […] also made me understand that my own glory did not
would not appear to mortal eyes, that it would consist of becoming a
Great Saint!!!… This desire might seem reckless if one
Consider how weak and imperfect I was, and how much I am now.
even after seven years in religious life, however I feel
always the same bold confidence to become a great
Holy, because I do not rely on my merits, having none, but
I place my hope in Him who is Virtue itself, Holiness itself. He alone is the one who
content with my feeble efforts, He will raise me up to Him and, me
Covering me with her infinite merits, she will make me a Saint. (Ms A Folio 32, r°)
To honor in our hearts the holiness of the Lord, Christ, is what
Thérèse, by renouncing the attempt to fabricate her own sanctity, but by receiving it from
Christ through welcoming Jesus into his own life.
And she would write the following year, in a letter to another of her sisters, sister
Mary of the Sacred Heart:
What pleases God in my little soul, […] is seeing me
To love my smallness and my poverty, that is the blind hope that I have
In His mercy… That is my only treasure. (LT 197 – September 17, 1896)
Yes, brothers and sisters, we have been saved by Christ in the sacraments.
of Christian initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist. The Holy Spirit
is given to us so that we can truly not only desire the
Heaven, but begin to live the grace of Heaven, the grace of the Kingdom. And the
The Beatitudes, which open Jesus' preaching in the Gospel of Saint Matthew
(5:1-12) are a testimony to this reality of the Kingdom present in the midst of
us. Our hope is this anchor cast into Heaven, which allows us to
let us be pulled forward.
This is what we must account for through the holiness of our lives, in
allowing the Lord Jesus to dwell in our hearts, by receiving him frequently
in the immense sacrament of the Eucharist, keeping his word, meditating on the
Holy Scriptures, especially the Holy Gospels, by knowing them “by
heart”, so that the Holy Spirit may constantly resound in our lives
The word of Jesus that strengthens us, that enriches us, that saves us, that
console. For if the Lord, God our Father, is going to send us another Paraclete,
another Comforter, that's because Jesus is the first comforter.
Let us find comfort in Jesus.

Let us be consoled by the Holy Spirit, keeping in our hearts the word
of Jesus, keeping the presence of Jesus in our hearts and verifying by the
charity concretely lived out towards our brothers and sisters, whom we are not
not in illusion

Amen.