WORD 2day: An experience that grips

Wednesday,  III week of Easter: 22nd April,  2015
Acts 8: 1b-8; Jn 6: 35-40

When things were getting worse the believers were getting stronger. They were scattered, but once in diaspora they continued their witnessing. There was something in them that made them just reckless about their new experience. That experience was so gripping that it made them forget all the pain they had to go through.

We keep receiving news after news of people who are ready to give up their life at the hands of the heartless fanatics these days. They too are capable of it because they are gripped by the experience they have had of the Risen one.

Just yesterday read about a preacher who wishes to go to Syria, to be of assistance and consolation to the people who are being persecuted for their faith. What a radical decision -  will it be possible without being gripped by a life changing experience? For me today Jesus has to become that experience,  that experience which grips me to a total transformation that I will fear nothing, for I know my Lord will raise me up on the last day, come what may!

WORD 2day: A chip from the same block

Tuesday,  III week of Easter: 21st April, 2015
Acts 7:51 -8:1a; Jn 6: 30-35.

Sometimes when I speak to the youngsters about the suffering that Jesus underwent, about his endurance of passion,  his capacity to surrender into the hands of God,  his capacity to forgive etc.,  they tend to retort saying: 'but he was son of God!" That is a heretic way of thinking,  I used to threaten them.

Yes Jesus was the Son of God but he was a human person and fully so. He was not appearing to be a human being,  he was a human being. As the letter to the Hebrews says,  he was like us,  a human being in everything! That is infact the most challenging part of our faith. That Jesus lived our life,  he went through all that we experience ourselves: feelings and temptations,  sufferings and anxieties,  irritations and all of human realities. The challenge is that we live in his footsteps.  The early Church was highly conscious of this call and we have today in the first reading the fruit of this.

Stephen was a chip from the same block as Christ. That is what we are called to be,  a chip from that same block.