The Confidence of Paul and Barnabas

In today's first reading, Acts 14: 5-18, Paul and Barnabas encounter opposition to their proclamation of the Good News of Jesus' resurrection. The jealousy of the leaders of an empire and their leaders' fear of losing their power led to Jesus' arrest and condemnation to be crucified, a fate that happened to anyone who was a threat to those in power at that time. However, death would have no power over Jesus, the Son of God. Efforts to destroy Him, then and now, would be in vain. Hence the confidence of Paul and Barnabas. They simply moved to other towns open to the Good News.

Neither the early Christians nor us today are promised a life free of problems, even problems within the Church, within our own families or society as a whole. What we are promised is that God is with us to the very end of the world as we know it! Some people may oppose us as Christians, as practicing Catholics, especially as believers in the Eucharist--the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, our spiritual food, of which Jesus invites us to partake:  "Take and eat!  This is my body given up for you. Take and drink!  This is my blood poured out for you" (Compare Luke 22: 19-20; Matthew 26: 26-28; Mark 14: 22-24). Many people walked away from Jesus when He said this about His body and blood. They would have none of this teaching. Jesus asked the apostles if they, too, were going to leave and Peter responded: "To whom shall we go, Lord? You have the words of everlasting life."

We may, in some instances, also be mocked for believing that the Scriptures, the Word of God, "is something alive and active: it cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely: it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thought. No created thing can hide from [God]; everything is uncovered and open to the eyes of the one to whom we must give an account of ourselves" (Hebrews 4: 12-3). Jesus' friend Mary gave priority to sitting at Jesus' feet, listening to His every word. We do that when we spend time reflecting upon the Scriptures or take time quietly pondering God's presence in nature, in the quiet of our rooms or in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament in a Catholic Church or a prayer space in any church!

Developing a personal relationship with Jesus, as Paul and Barnabas did, is important if we are going to weather the storms of this life!

Going to Jerusalem with Jesus

Imagine yourself in the scene of today's Gospel, Mark 10: 32-45: You are on the way with Jesus to Jerusalem. On the way Jesus tells you that He is going to be handed over to the chief priests, to Gentiles--unbelievers--who are going to condemn Him to death, mock Him, spit upon Him, scourge Him, and crucify Him and in three days He will rise from the dead!  JESUS, who has become your best friend. You have fallen in love with Him. For three years you have hung on His every word. You witnessed His healings, His raising people from the dead, giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf.  You have seen Him cast out demons and challenge those who condemn others. You yourself have been challenged to live a life of service to others, to forgive others, not seven times but seventy times seven times.  You had meals with Jesus. You've seen Him walk on water and calm storms, literal ones and emotional ones!  And He tells you of His impending crucifixion at the hands of unbelievers!  He tells you that His end is near! Life with Him, as you know it, will be over soon!

Imagine your conversation with Jesus following this information. It goes something like this:

No, Jesus! This is not possible.  It will not happen. I will not let it happen.

It will happen.  It is my Father's will.

No! It cannot be Your Father's will. No Father would want this for His Son.

You do not understand.

Yes, I do. It cannot happen. It will not happen! I won't let it happen.

In the midst of my suffering, you will flee out of fright. On the hill of my crucifixion, you will be no where to be found.

Jesus! No, no, no. It cannot be.

It must happen, __(your name),________________. Through my death I will ransom you from eternal death.  Three days after my death, I will rise from the the dead and return to My Father, from where I will send you the Holy Spirit, who will teach you all things.  Then, through the power of the Holy Spirit,  you are to travel throughout the whole world and baptize all peoples in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 

My Lord and My God! 

God's Delight in Us

In today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 149, we make the following proclamation: "The Lord takes delight in his people."  I invite you and me to rephrase that to say: "The Lord takes delight in me."  When you are awed by the sunrise or sunset, think of God gazing at you with awe as well. When you are overcome with an intense sense of gratitude for your son or daughter or the new child that you have just brought home from the hospital following his/her birth, think of God being filled with intense gratitude for you.  Yes, God delights in you day and night!

In our darkest moments, you and I might totally disagree that God could ever "delight"  in us. We might deeply deny this possibility when we are filled with a sense of shame and guilt, when we may have just exploded in anger or made an assumption about someone and that assumption is proven totally untrue, or at moments when we may have failed to defend another person when such is being bullied or when we join a "gossip party".

However, God, I believe,  always sees us as redeemed by His Son, that is, clothed with a robe of salvation, made righteous by His Son's sufferings, death and resurrection (cf Isaiah 61: 10).  About you or anyone else,  God  says to us: "My thoughts are not your thoughts" (Is 58: 8-9).

HAPPY EASTER!

HALLELUIA! The Lord is Risen. Heaven has been open to us. Sin is destroyed! Alleluia! Satan’s power taken away from him. He will not be victorious in turning us away from our God and Savior, unless, like Judas, we do not seek His mercy and love.

Pardoned, forgiven, saved by God’s love for us and His mercy toward us! Alleluiua!
Pardoned by the Lord’s love shown to us by Jesus’ obedience to the Father unto death. Alleluia!

Yet, for our sins was Jesus put to death! Alleluia, praise to our Savior and Lord!

Every woman and man, every child and adolescent, has died with Christ in baptism and will rise with Christ at the end of his or her time here on earth. Alleluia.

Alleluia. O death, where is your sting! Death, for us,  includes the resurrection, as it did for Jesus!

Sting of death, you have been dissolved into the joy of our awaiting for Jesus to return to take us with Him! Alleluia!

Today, Jesus, said to the good thief on the cross, you will be with me in Paradise. Jesus will say the same thing to you and I when we are about to be released from death. Alleluia!

Ever mindful of God’s unconditional love for us, we, too, await our resurrection into eternal life! Alleluia!

Remember that you have been ransomed from sin by Jesus’ death and resurrection! Alleluia!

Remember Jesus' Resurrection and its Significance

“Beloved: Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead,” Timothy asks of us in today’s first reading of Ordinary Time, 2 Timothy 2: 8-15.  There is nothing ordinary in Jesus’ resurrection.  Proclaiming the resurrection in Timothy’s time resulted for many in martyrdom. They were imprisoned and put to death for speaking in Jesus’ name and for proclaiming their belief in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, as it contradicted the story that circulated among the Jews at the time, and to this day,  namely that Jesus’  body was stolen from the grave during the night while the guards slept.  In their minds there was on resurrection. There was no Easter morning.

We might have a difficult time comprehending the seriousness of the charge against those thrown into prison, suffering, as was Timothy, “even to the point of chains, like a criminal.”  In his pain, Timothy proclaimed that “the word of God is not chained.” Nothing would deter Timothy from preaching God’s Word.  Salvation came from the Word of God who died upon the cross and rose three days later so that we, too,  would rise from sin and death to new life in Christ Jesus.  No way would Timothy stop proclaiming that truth “for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, together with eternal glory.”   Timothy goes on to remind us that:

                “If we have died [to sin] with him

                we shall also live with him;

                If we persevere [in being faithful to Jesus]

                we shall also reign with him.

                But if we deny him         

                he will deny us.

                {Even if] we are unfaithful

                he remains faithful,

                for he cannot deny himself.”

Jesus, the Word of God, is faithfulness itself.  He cannot not remain faithful to the Father’s will, namely , that you and are saved from sin and death. 

 For this I was chosen and so were you! What a gift! What love! There is no suffering you and I might undergo  in our efforts to live as Jesus lived that is too much to ask of us given Jesus’ faithfulness to the Father’s will.  Jesus will never, never abandon His mission to save us from sin and death.         How about us?

Continuous pain, Incurable woundedness

In today’s first reading, Jer 15: 10, 16-21, Jeremiah laments about having been born, sees himself as a person “of strife and contention.”  He complains that he neither borrows or lends yet “all curse me.”  He cries out in his pain, saying to the Lord: “Why is my pain continuous, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?”  How many people, I thought, are in that state of mind, tortured by emotional and psychological pain, traumatized by the violence of war, sitting in refugee camps, and so wounded by past traumas of sexual, physical, verbal and emotional abuse that their psyches remain, it seems, incurably wounded. 

The Lord responded to Jeremiah, asking him to repent of any wrongdoing and bring Him “the precious without the vile.”  Each and every person is the precious one in God’s sight. Before God, none of  us is despicable, wicked or loathsome.  In Christ Jesus we have been made clean, purified, healed and made whole.  Jesus Himself took our vile with Him when He entered Gethsemane. His agony was our agony,   as Jesus, the Son of God, lives in the Eternal Now.   Not only His agony in the Garden but also His crucifixion on the cross and his resurrection are our sufferings, our crucifixions and our resurrections, as, in Baptism, we died and rose with Christ. Before willingly going into His final hours,  Jesus prayed to His Father, and ours, that we would all be made one in Him as He and the Father are one. His prayer would not have fallen on deaf ears. You and I, if not now, later will know this oneness with the Lord and with one another. Vile will not separate us from the Lord.  On the cross,  Jesus set us  free us from that which defiles us, saying to the Father: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” when they commit evil or go astray. Jeremiah repented of any wrongdoing he might have done. 

May you and I repent of all that defiles our thinking or choosing or interacting with others and believe in the resurrection, accepting the grace of being set free.

The Apostles' Boldness in Proclaiming Jesus' Resurrection

In today’s first reading, Acts 5: 27-33, we encounter the Apostles boldly proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection and witnessing to His Messiahship, that he is the one sent by God to redeem us.  When confronted by the Sanhedrin, which arrested them and reiterated its command that they stop talking about Jesus, their response is: “We must obey God rather than… [human beings].”  And then go on to say:  “The God of our ancestors raised Jesus… [from the dead]… [and] “exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to grant Israel [and all of us] repentance and forgiveness of sins. We are witnesses of these things, as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” They were being obedience to  the commission Jesus gave them just before His ascension into heaven to  return to His Father: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16: 15).

Since that very time, for 2000+ years, in obedience to the Holy Spirit guiding them, people throughout the ages have been and continue proclaiming this Gospel and all of Jesus’ teaching. Because of the faithfulness of our parents, parish priests, family members and friends, our catechists, you and I have come to know about Jesus.  It is our responsibility to get to know Jesus personally, not just about Him.  We do that in the same way that we get to know our best friend/s. We spend a lot of time with Jesus, visiting Him in prayer, in the Eucharist, at Mass, reading the Scriptures and talking with Him throughout the day as issues arise. We share our hopes and our fears, our disappointments, our sadness, joy, anger and serenity, fear and security—all of our feelings—with Him.  We reveal our thoughts to Jesus and listen to His.  As we get to know and love Jesus, just as when we grow in knowledge and love of our best friend/s, spouses, companions on the journey of faith, we grow in trust and share everything about us and our lives with Jesus and Jesus with us.