Saul is proof that God’s ways are not our ways. How is it that God would pick for one of his chief Apostles a man who imprisoned and murdered the followers of the Christian Way? That had to surprise even, and perhaps especially Saul, whose life was turned completely upside-down. Poor Ananias had to be quaking in his boots to carry out this command of the Lord. But thankfully both Paul and Ananias were obedient to the Lord’s command, and we are the ones who have benefited from that. Not only has the Word of God been passed on through their faithfulness, but we see in their lives that obedience to God’s will, while it may not always make sense, is the way that true disciples live.
Category: Easter
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Thursday of the Third Week of Easter
Being in the right place at the right time isn’t usually a coincidence. Far more often than we realize, I think it’s the work of the Holy Spirit. Certainly that has to be the case in today’s first reading. How else would we explain an angel directing Philip to be on a road at the very same time as the Ethiopian eunuch passed by, reading a passage from the prophet Isaiah that referred to Jesus? Seizing the moment, Philip explains the Jesus event to him in a way that was powerful enough and moving enough that, on seeing some water as they continued on the journey, the eunuch begged to be baptized. Then, as the Spirit whisks Philip off to Azotus, the eunuch continues on his way, rejoicing in his new life.
The same is true for those who were fortunate enough to hear Jesus proclaim the Bread of Life discourse that we’ve been reading in our Gospel readings these past days. Having been fed by a few loaves and fishes when they were physically hungry, they now come to find Jesus who longs to fill them up not just physically but also, and more importantly, spiritually. Their hunger put them in the right place at the right time.
Maybe what’s important for us to get today is that we are always in the right place at the right time, spiritually speaking. Wherever we find ourselves is the place that we are directed by the Holy Spirit to find God. Wherever we find ourselves is the place that we are directed by the Holy Spirit to proclaim God. And so we may be called upon to find God in the midst of peace, or chaos, or any situation. We never know how God may feed us in those situations. And we may indeed be called upon to proclaim God in those same peaceful, or chaotic, situations. Because we never know when there will be someone like an Ethiopian eunuch there, aching to be filled with Christ’s presence and called to a new life.
It is no coincidence that we are where we are, when we are. The Spirit always calls on us to find our God and proclaim him as Lord of every moment and every situation.
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Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter
As Catholics, we believe that opposite things don’t necessarily cancel each other out. For instance, we believe, as our first reading today illustrates, that we can have joy in the midst of sorrow. The early Community found themselves severely persecuted. Saul, for whom God had future plans, was currently doing his best to destroy the Christian Way, and he was not alone. Many suffered and died as St. Stephen did in yesterday’s reading, and others were exiled from their homes. But even in the midst of that, St. Philip was doing Christ’s work quite successfully in Samaria. There was great joy in that city. To some, that would seem so contradictory and out-of-whack. But for us, we know that this is how life is. There is sadness, and there is joy, and all of it is a gift in some way. Even today, some of us may have sadness, and others joy. May we experience it with peace as the early Community did.
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Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter
At our core, we all want peace and security in our lives. We don’t want rough waters, or pain, or discord in our families, and that’s all understandable. I think it’s that very same sentiment that is behind our Scripture readings today.
The Jewish people, the elders and the scribes, the religious establishment of the time, had their laws and customs, and for them, following those laws and customs represented a peaceful and secure life. So they were not at all open to any kind of teaching that challenged their way of life. Stephen points out that whenever a prophet called them to a deeper reality, a deeper sense of God’s call, rather than accept that teaching and reform their lives, their ancestors instead murdered the prophets. And so their response was to prove his point. They could not accept Stephen’s own prophecy that Christ in his glory was the key to human salvation. So they stone him to death, with the tacit approval of a man named Saul, a man for whom God had future plans.
The crowd in the Gospel reading wants peace and security too. They had recently been fed in the miracle of the loaves and fishes. But they had missed the point. They wanted just the bread they could eat for today; they didn’t get and didn’t want to get the bread Jesus really wanted them to have – the bread of eternal life. And so they ask today for another feeding sign. Just like Moses was able to provide bread from heaven, they wanted Jesus to feed their physical hunger too. But Jesus is more interested in their spiritual hunger, and longs to provide that in himself, he who is the bread of life.
But if all we hunger for is peace and security, bread for today, then we will certainly miss receiving the Bread of Life. Our hearts have to be open and our desires have to be for the deepest longings. Then we can receive our Savior who wants to give us everything we truly need. “I am the bread of life;” he says to us. “Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
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Monday of the Third Week of Easter
So they drag Saint Stephen before the Sanhedrin, and make all sorts of false claims against him. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In fact, Stephen is in good company. He is brought to the same place where his Lord Jesus, and later Peter and the apostles, have gone before him. And just like all of them, even with all the lies and accusations flying around him, he is at peace. The source of his peace, is of course, his Lord who has gone before him, that same Lord who now fills him, as the first line of the reading says, with “grace and power.” We too, will be tested in this life because of our faith. We too, can rely on that same grace and power if we unite ourselves to our Risen Lord.
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Third Sunday of Easter
There is a big difference in Peter in the Gospel and Peter in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles today. As the Gospel story begins, we find Peter completely wounded by his past. He had denied his Lord, not once, but three times. Now that the crucifixion and resurrection has taken place, Peter is unsure as to where to go next. So he, and the disciples, return to what they knew best, they go fishing. Only they aren’t very successful at that either. “Children, have you caught anything?” Jesus asks. And the response is amazingly concise and honest for a bunch of fishermen: “No.” Whenever the disciples try to fish without Jesus, they catch exactly nothing, and this time is no exception.
Jesus does three very significant things for them in this story. First, he tells them to go fishing once again, and this time, they catch more than they can carry. Because their real catch will be just like that: many men and women for the kingdom of God. Second, he cooks breakfast for them. This is a foreshadowing of the Eucharistic meal that will nourish the disciples and their progeny throughout the ages, the same Eucharistic meal which nourishes us. Finally, he takes Peter aside and asks him if he loves him. Not just once, but three times. Peter denied his Lord three times, and the Lord gives him three opportunities to accept healing.
Having been healed and nourished, Jesus then sends Peter out on mission. We are never given any gift, most especially reconciliation, to keep just for ourselves. God gives us gifts in order that we might share them with others. Just as Peter was healed, so he was expected to go out and introduce others to the healing of Jesus Christ. We too, have been healed and nourished, and the expectation is there for us as well. We have been healed of our sins through a triple affirmation: Lord, have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy. We are about to be nourished with the meal prepared for us by our Savior. And so we must go out and feed his sheep, take care of his lambs.
Peter changed a lot in two short readings. If the Gospel began by finding him frightened and unsure, the reading from Acts finds him confident and bold. The difference is the Holy Spirit, the One who gives witness with him. We have received the Holy Spirit too, those of us who have been baptized and have been confirmed. We can rely on the Spirit to give witness with us also. We might have to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name, but we can rejoice that we are fulfilling our ministry in the name of our Lord who feeds us and heals us.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
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Friday of the Second Week of Easter
Once again, the disciples are overjoyed that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the Name. That seems rather counter-intuitive, but when you stop to think about it, given all the possible reasons to suffer dishonor and to be beaten, the best reason is “for the sake of the Name.” We know that those who suffer in that way are treasures for our God, and they are given their just reward.
What I think is interesting in today’s first reading though, is the unintentional prophecy of Gamaliel. His words are a combination of a brush-off, since he obviously thinks the early Christian community is a bunch of kooks, and a bit of rear-end covering, since if it does turn out that these kooks are right, then at least they don’t get to be guilty of putting them to death. At least not yet.
But the courage of the apostles is inspiring, isn’t it? They have been warned twice and put in prison, and now beaten, and still we are told that “all day long, both at the temple and in their homes, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus.” We are grateful for their new-found courage today, or we wouldn’t be here worshipping right now.
We are called to display that same courage and to speak non-stop of our Lord Jesus Christ in all that we say and do. The psalmist today reminds us that the only thing worth seeking is to dwell in the house of the Lord, and the only way to do that is to follow our Risen Lord.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
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Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter
Today’s first reading is one of the most exciting readings of the New Testament for me. And it’s the angel of the Lord, the Lord’s messenger, who puts it all into crystal clear focus. The angel opens the prison doors as if they weren’t even locked and says to the imprisoned disciples, “Go and take your place in the temple area, and tell the people everything about this life.” Two things stand out in that for me.
First of all, the angel says “Go and take your place…” The disciples weren’t created for life in prison, they weren’t created for obscurity in their old lives from before they met Jesus. They were created for ministry, and their place was in the temple area, preaching what they had come to know and believe.
Second, the angel tells them to “tell the people everything about this life.” I love those words: “this life” – faith in Jesus wasn’t just a pastime, diversion or sport. It was their very life – it was everything they were and were created for.
I think people today get this wrong a lot. The parish where I was before this one hosted a pretty successful football league for elementary and junior high school boys. You couldn’t live in Naperville and not have heard of St. Raphael Football. The interesting thing was that when I would be talking to people socially, I would often hear things like, “Oh yes, we go to St. Raphael’s – our sons are on the football team.” I tried to find a way to tell them politely that we celebrated Mass there too.
The point is that we were created to live our faith, and not just observe it as a pastime, or try to practice it whenever our schedule isn’t too hectic. We were created to be people who tell others everything about this life that we live, this life of faith in Jesus Christ. Our faith is the only permanent thing that we have in this life, the only thing that we have now that we’ll also have in eternity. And we have to make sure that everyone knows how important that is.
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Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter
Our first reading from Acts this morning tells us that the early Christian community cared for one another deeply, and were generous in that care. They were even selling their possessions to give to those who were in need. Nobody felt needy, nobody felt cheated, nobody felt like they were doing more than their share. People were worshipping not just with their minds, but also with their hearts, and their worshipping didn’t stop when they left the worship place. That was the kind of worship Jesus was encouraging Nicodemus to practice as well.
So the same has to be true for us, really. We have to be willing to give of our hearts, to believe not just when we’re in church, but also when we are in the rest of our life. We have to trust God to take care of us when we stick our neck out to help someone else. We have to worship not just with our minds but also with our hearts.
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Monday of the Second Week of Easter
One of the great things about being Catholic, I think, is the celebration of Easter. We do it up right, and keep doing it for fifty days! In fact, just yesterday we completed our celebration of Easter Day, which lasts for eight full days. It certainly makes sense to us that the joy of our salvation should be celebrated with great festivity, and we shouldn’t be so eager to toss the lilies out of the church (even if they do make me sneeze sometimes!).
Today we begin the second phase of our Easter celebration. Having completed the Octave of Easter, we now begin the preparation for the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the first Apostles, and later to each Christian. We have in our Gospel today the emergence of the interesting figure of Nicodemus. He was a Jew, and one of the Pharisees. But he found Jesus and his message compelling, so a few times in John’s Gospel we get to hear from Nicodemus. Even though the rest of the Pharisees flat out rejected Jesus, Nicodemus knew that he couldn’t reject him so quickly. There was something to this Jesus, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it. As far as we know, he never fully, publicly accepted Jesus, but he took many steps on the way.
Today Nicodemus and Jesus speak about being born again, born of the Spirit. This for us is a process of accepting the Gospel in faith, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and then living as a people reborn. Although we can point to our Confirmation day, and even the day of our Baptism as days when we received the Holy Spirit, the process of accepting the Gospel in faith and living as a people reborn in the Spirit is one that takes the rest of our lives. What we celebrate with joy today is that we are on that journey. Because of the Resurrection of Our Lord and his gift of the Holy Spirit, we can now live according to the Spirit’s direction in our lives, confident that that Holy Spirit will give us the gifts and courage to do what we are called to do. The Apostles did that in today’s first reading, and now we must do the same.
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