Homily
for Tuesday
2d Week
of Easter
April
26, 2022
Collect
Christian
Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, New Rochelle
“Enable us to proclaim the power of the
risen Lord” (Collect).
As we’ve begun to read the Acts of the Apostles, the prototypical readings of the Easter season, we’ve seen that Jesus’ disciples lacked the courage to move out of the upper room and were at a total loss about how to proceed with the commission Jesus gave them to make disciples of all nations. They needed the gift of the Holy Spirit, and then they began boldly to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, to give public witness to their brotherhood, and even to carry out miraculous healings. The power of the risen Lord was alive in them.
We, too, need help, need to be enabled,
as the collect says, to proclaim the risen Lord’s power. We need the help of the Spirit to be
witnesses to Jesus by living virtuously.
It’s really hard, often, as we all know, to be patient with one another,
to speak kindly and not disparagingly, perhaps also to share such goods as we
may have, and our hearts, with one another.
In fact, the 1st reading today (Acts
4:32-37) stresses the sharing of goods.
That, of course, is fundamental to our way of life. What a blessing it is! Inasmuch as our practice of gospel poverty is
known, the people of God marvel at it and admire it. It’s a form of our witness to the power of
the risen Lord that we don’t need private estates, cars, or bank accounts but
can hold all things in common like the 1st Christians.
We’re enabled to give such witness—of
poverty but above all of charity—because we “have received the pledge of his
gift,” the collect says. The Holy Spirit
has been given to us, as it was to the 120 disciples in the upper room, as a
pledge of the divine life promised to us.
That pledge inspires us to live in a gospel way—not only in our actions
but also in our thoughts and our words, as best we can, and to support and help
one another on our path as disciples of Jesus.
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