PEOPLE OF RESURRECTION - LISTENERS OF THE VOICE

Saturday of the Easter week

April 6, 2024 - Acts 4: 13-21; Mark 16: 9-15

We are almost ending this Easter week which continues to give the characteristics of the Easter People - today we have a typical trait: people who listen and obey the voice of God. My own know my voice and they listen to me; those who listen to my father and do what he wants are my mother, my brothers and my sisters - these were clear teachings of Christ. Understanding well what Jesus meant by these words, St. James in simple terms put it: we shall be deceiving ourselves if we only listen to the Word and do not live by it. 

There is a symbiotic relation between the people of Resurrection and the listening to the voice of the Lord. The Apostles realised that only after the Resurrection experience - they would not have said what we hear them say in the first reading today, before the event of Christ's resurrection. We cannot ignore what God tells us for the sake of what you tell us, they declare with courage that they cannot just stop speaking of what they have seen about the Lord and heard from the Lord.  

Here we see three levels of listening to the Voice of the Lord - first is the level of hearing: to read the Scriptures, to listen to teachings and preachings etc.; second is the level of understanding: to not stop with reading and listening but to meditate and reflect and to contemplate the Word through various means; third is the level of living: to put into practice what one has heard, listened to and meditated upon, creating a change from within and in the context around. This is evangelisation in its essence. Go out to the whold world and proclaim the good news says the Lord - if that is what the Lord has told us, can we remain without doing it?

What is important is to discern how we shall do it, how we shall become true listeners of the Voice, how we can become people who listen, understand and live the Word, spreading it thus wherever we are and where we are sent to be people of Resurrection.