ARE YOU READY??
This Sunday returns the Church to its regular Sundays of Ordinary Time. Although the Easter Season concluded with the end of evening prayer on the feast of Pentecost, we have celebrated two great feasts on the Sundays between Pentecost and today: Trinity Sunday and the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.
We were “on a high” during the Easter Season then celebratory with the two great feasts. Now it’s back to Ordinary Time—ho hum!. Green vestments and a return to the twelfth Sunday, thirteenth Sunday and on and on—until the feast of Christ the King and Advent.
But “Ordinary” is not ORDINARY! Over the last three months I’ve often thought that this was the year that Easter wasn’t. But not so! We may not have celebrated as we usually do, but Jesus still lived, died and rose for us and it’s to be celebrated DAILY in our hearts and lives! Maybe with the forced slowing of our lives over the last months, we were able to spend more time with the Word of God. If so, we meditated on some very pertinent ideas for our own time.
Jesus did live, die and rise for us. He taught us how to live in love, He died to forgive us our sins and He opened the gates of heaven so that we could live with Him forever
The First Readings during the Easter Season came from the Acts of the Apostles. We see that the apostles/disciples preached this new found faith, supported by the Holy Spirit with courage, conviction and trust in God despite persecution, imprisonment and even death. Our Gospel today acknowledges the Father is aware of all our hardships in proclaiming the word and in living our lives…if only we live and proclaim in His light, we need not be afraid. And when we are afraid often with good reason, we need to turn to Him in trust asking for courage and assistance.
One thing noted in Acts is that whenever the apostles/disciples seemed to be successful in their works…”and 3000 men were added that day”…trouble usually followed. Satan does not like “the works of the Lord. ”
So here we are today: Baptized in the Trinity, our faith affirmed in Confirmation. Can WE proclaim “the Gospel of the Lord” from the housetop? Can we overcome our fears not so much of death for speaking out, but of ridicule, arguments (Can we support our stance?), not being “cool?”
We have seen in the last weeks that we are endowed with the “Gifts of the Spirit. ” We have Christ’s prayer asking the Father to “make them one with us as You, Father are in Me and I, in You.” And we have the nourishment of Christ’s own Body and Blood.
And one last thought. There are 15 mysteries of the Rosary. We meditate on the lives of Jesus and Mary. The 3rd Luminous Mystery is “The Proclamation of the Kingdom.” Maybe we can meditate on not just their lives, but our own…
ARE YOU READY to proclaim the Kingdom of God?
Linda Caminiti