Tuesday, 3rd week in Eastertide
17th April, 2018: Acts 7:51-8:1a; Jn 6: 30-35
Sometimes when I counsel persons to look at Christ and the suffering that he underwent, at the endurance he had and at his capacity to surrender himself into the hands of God, at his capacity to forgive etc., they tend to retort saying: 'but he was son of God!" That is a heretic way of thinking, I threaten them with a smile.
Yes, Jesus was the Son of God but he was a human person and fully so. He was not just 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. We tend to overlook that because, if we accept it we have to accept also the challenge of we ourselves living 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. Stephen was a chip from the same block as Christ. Luke while recounting the scene of Stephen's martyrdom, makes it a point to record those words that he said at the end: those were the very words that Jesus said when he died. Luke repeats it here to impress upon us that this is what we are called to be: a chip from that same block.
Do not be carried away by things that you apparently see - the people thought Moses gave them bread - it was God who gave it to them. It is easy for us to be satisfied with the apparent superficial mode of living our Christian life. The Lord says, No - you are challenged to become like Him, like Christ, a chip from that very same block!