Feast of Saint Mark, evangelist | USCCB
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Sunday, April 24, 2022... View More

Sunday, April 24, 2022

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY)
JOHN 20:19-31
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Thomas says that he will not believe in the Lord’s Resurrection unless he puts his finger in the nailmarks and his hand in Jesus’ side. Thomas is a saint especially suitable for our time. Modernity has been marked by two great qualities: skepticism and empiricism, the very qualities we can discern in Thomas.
And when the risen Jesus reappears, he invites the doubter to look, see, and touch. But then that devastating line: “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
If we stubbornly say—even in the area of science—that we will accept only what we can clearly see and touch and control, we wouldn’t know much about reality. This helps us to better understand Jesus’ words to Thomas. It is not that we who have not seen and have believed are settling for a poor substitute for vision. No; we are being described as blessed, more blessed than Thomas. God is doing all sorts of things that we cannot see, measure, control, fully understand. But it is an informed faith that allows one to fall in love with such a God.

Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, PO Box 170, Des Plaines, IL 60016, United States
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Alleluia Jn 20:29
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
You believe in me, Thomas, because you have seen me, says the Lord;
blessed are those who have not seen me, but still believe!... View MoreAlleluia Jn 20:29
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
You believe in me, Thomas, because you have seen me, says the Lord;
blessed are those who have not seen me, but still believe!
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel


Saturday, April 23, 2022... View More

Saturday, April 23, 2022

SATURDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF EASTER
MARK 16:9-15
Friends, in today’s Gospel, the risen Lord commissions the eleven Apostles to proclaim the Good News to everyone. And this commission to evangelize the people of the world extends to all baptized Christians.
To evangelize is to proclaim Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. When this kerygma, this Paschal Mystery, is not at the heart of the project, Christian evangelization effectively disappears, devolving into a summons to bland religiosity or generic spirituality. When Jesus crucified and risen is not proclaimed, a beige and unthreatening Catholicism emerges, a thought system that is, at best, an echo of the environing culture.
Peter Maurin, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement, said that the Church has taken its own dynamite and placed it in hermetically sealed containers and sat on the lid. In a similar vein, Stanley Hauerwas commented that the problem with Christianity is not that it is socially conservative or politically liberal, but that “it is just too damned dull”!
For both Maurin and Hauerwas, what leads to this attenuation is a refusal to preach the dangerous and unnerving news concerning Jesus risen from the dead.

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