17-Apr-2017 Dear Friend, To be a believer is it really necessary to be a member of a faith community? Is not my faith my own business? Can I not go to my God without my brother and sister? Today’s readings remind us that something is missing in our lives if we do not walk the faith journey together. The early Christian community was the greatest proof of the Resurrection. If we are not with the community we might like Thomas miss meeting Jesus when he comes. Often God gives us the touch of his divine mercy in community. May we have a faith-affirming weekend! –Fr. Jude Sun. Ref: 2nd Sunday of Easter “Happy are those who have not seen, yet believe!” 23-Apr-2017Acts: 2: 42-47; 1 Peter 1: 3- 9; John 20:19-31
The first reading from the Acts has an apt description of the ideal Christian community, a community gathered around the Risen Lord. There are two characteristics pointed out in this community. Firstly, there was a tremendous unity and secondly, as a result of this unity, there was a generous sharing of all that they had, not out of a sense of obligation but out of deep love and concern for others. The breaking of the bread and sharing of the cup led to sharing of possessions and care of the needy. Their worship in the temple flowed out into their service of neighbor. Is there a dichotomy between our worship and our lives? Do we merely live with others or for others? Today we are reminded that if we are an Easter people we have to share our lives, and in that measure we grow as a Christian community and experience Jesus alive in our midst. ‘Together we can make it!’Bob Butler lost his legs in a 1965 land mine explosion in Vietnam. He returned home a war hero. Twenty years later, Butler was working in his garage in a small town in Arizona on a hot summer day when he heard a woman's screams coming from a nearby house. He rolled his wheelchair toward the house, but the dense shrubbery wouldn't allow him access to the back door. So the veteran got out of his chair and crawled through the dirt and bushes. When Butler arrived at the house, he traced the screams to the pool, where a three-year-old girl was lying at the bottom. She had been born without arms and had fallen in the water and couldn't swim. Her mother stood over her baby screaming frantically. Butler dove to the bottom of the pool and brought little Stephanie up to the deck. Her face was blue, she had no pulse and she was not breathing. Butler immediately went to work performing CPR to revive her while Stephanie's mother telephoned the fire department. She was told the paramedics were already out on a call. Helplessly, she sobbed and hugged Butler's shoulder. As Butler continued with his CPR, he calmly reassured Stephanie's mother. "Don't worry," he said. "I was her arms to get out of the pool. It'll be okay. I'm now her lungs. Together we can make it." Seconds later the little girl coughed, regained consciousness and began to cry. As they hugged and rejoiced together, the mother asked Butler how he knew it would be okay. "When my legs were blown off in the war, I was all alone in a field," he told her. "No one was there to help except a little Vietnamese girl. As she struggled to drag me into her village, she whispered in broken English, 'It okay. You can live. I be your legs. Together we make it.'" "This was my chance," he told Stephanie's mom, "to return the favour."Dan Clark In the Gospel while Jesus is offering his disciples his peace he says “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” It could mean that Jesus meant all of us to be reconcilers and mediators of his peace to one another. We are called to be channels of his peace and forgiveness. The Gospel adds a little detail that Thomas, one of the twelve was not with them when Jesus came and when the others told him that they had seen the Lord he refused to believe. He demanded solid, physical touch: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” In spite of not believing their testimonies, Thomas did not walk out on them, but rather, stayed with the community. His perseverance was rewarded with the second appearance of Jesus to him. Jesus on his part is seen to be patient and tolerant of Thomas and all those who still doubted him. He does not condemn but rather takes the initiative to meet them on their terms and conditions. “Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Doubt no longer but believe.” The gospel concludes with those reassuring words for many of us, who have our doubts, who have not seen and are struggling to believe. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” The image of the risen, glorified Jesus showing the wounds of his suffering impels us to understand that we will accomplish our mission; or rather Jesus will accomplish his mission in us through love expressed in giving ourselves for others. Ideal or real?Christy Brown, the disabled Dublin writer, died in 1981. One day, long before he became famous, he saw a picture of the English novelist, Margaret Foster, on the dust cover of one of her books, and immediately fell in love with her. He wrote her a letter that brimmed with charm and wit. She replied and thus began a warm friendship. Christy was very anxious to meet her. However, when she learned that he was severely handicapped, she was dead against it. From the kind of letters he wrote, she had formed a beautiful image of him in her mind, and was afraid that if she met him, her fantasy would be destroyed. However, they did eventually meet. By this time Christy was a well-known writer himself. Sure enough, when she saw Christy’s severely deformed body, she couldn’t take it. She stopped answering his letters, and their friendship petered out. Christy could only move the toe of his left foot. With this he somehow learned to type. It was with his toe that he wrote those charming letters and his subsequent books. His greatness lay in the fact that, despite his handicap, he still managed to write those letters. But Margaret was unable to see this. All she could see was his twisted body. Unable to take this, she eased him out of her life.Anon Our image of the MessiahThe death of Jesus had a similar effect on the apostles. They had come to believe, or at least to hope, that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. But they had an idealized picture of the Messiah. They pictured him as a great leader, a conqueror. So when Jesus was killed, all their hopes were shattered. Thomas was the worst affected. But when Thomas touched the wounds of Jesus, his doubts vanished and his faith was reborn. He realized that this is how Jesus had proved his love for them. He didn’t just talk about love; he gave an example of it, and had the wounds to prove it.Flor McCarthy in ‘New Sunday & Holy Day Liturgies’ Touch Him in peopleSeveral years ago a Joy of Life program was put on by the University of St. Thomas in Houston. The program featured outstanding people from the Houston area. But of all the people who appeared in that Joy of Life program the one who stole the show was a 6 year-old mentally deficient girl. When the spotlight focused on her, a sign on her back could be read: “I am retarded, but I am glad to be alive.” What an affirmation of faith on the part of her parents! Their 6 year-old daughter was retarded but they were glad she was alive, and made her feel glad that she was alive. It was an affirmation of faith comparable to Thomas in the gospel. In fact their faith surpassed the faith of Thomas. He believed because he saw the Lord. These parents believed even though they had not seen the Lord. Every time they held their retarded daughter they believed they were touching the Christ living in her. Their affirmation of faith is what Jesus praised in the gospel. During the liturgy we profess our faith in Jesus Christ. At the end of the liturgy we will be sent to “Love and serve the Lord” –in mentally deficient 6 year-old children and in teenage rebels; to love and serve the Lord in alcoholic parents and senile grandparents. We are challenged not to persist in our unbelief, but to believe –to believe in the risen Lord, and to believe that he still lives in his people. Do we have enough faith to touch him in his people?Albert Cylwicki in ‘His Word Resounds’ The Doubter“Thomas remains forever a symbol of the power of doubting. He is a model of how doubt can sometimes lead one to the truth much more effectively than blind faith can. In order to be fruitful, doubt must be carried out with a thorough honesty. The most important single step in the art of doubting is: to be willing to confront the possible truth. If Thomas had not been willing to come face-to-face with Jesus, he would never have known that Christ had risen. When facing Jesus, if he had refused to engage in a confronting dialogue, he may never have known that this was really the same person with whom he had walked the streets of Jerusalem. The person who doubts and then avoids the subject, or laughs at it, or considers it too insignificant to deal with, is a classic fool. His or her doubts cause the person to live on the periphery of reality, in a dull routine that gets a bit shaken every time the truth gets near. We must be willing to carry our doubts as did Thomas. Doubt that seeks to confront has far more power to lead one to the truth than dull acceptance which seeks not to be bothered.”Eugene Lauer Living faithA man was vacationing alone in a small cabin in the California mountains. He was feeling lonely and depressed. Something was radically wrong with his life. God seemed to have deserted him. His faith was flickering and threatening to go out. In desperation the man turned to God and promised that he would do anything that God wanted, if God would give back to him his peace of mind. Then something strange happened. God seemed to speak to the man. God seemed to say to him, “Start living the gospels. Start living out the teachings of Jesus, even though you don’t understand them.” At that moment the man made a decision. He resolved then and there to live his life according to the teachings of Jesus. The decision turned the man’s life around. It wasn’t easy at first. He fell back into his old ways again and again. But that one decision made all the difference. In an article entitled ‘Living the Word’, the man says that his cabin experience taught him a lesson he never forgot the rest of his life. “I learned,” he says, “to hear the word and act on it.” Blaise Pascal, a 17th century mathematical genius, who was deeply religious, once wrote: “if you want to strengthen your faith, do not augment your arguments but weed out your passions.” In other words, the way to strengthen our faith is to live it, to put it into practice in our daily lives.Mark Link in ‘Sunday Homilies’ May the touch of divine mercy wipe away all doubts from our lives! Fr. Jude Botelho [email protected] PS. The stories, incidents and anecdotes used in the reflections have been collected over the years from books as well as from sources over the net and from e-mails received. Every effort is made to acknowledge authors whenever possible. If you send in stories or illustrations I would be grateful if you could quote the source as well so that they can be acknowledged if used in these reflections. These reflections are also available on my Web site www.NetForLife.net Thank you.
