Homily for Saturday, Octave of Easter

Homily for Saturday
Octave of Easter

April 26, 2025
Acts 4: 13-21
Provincial House, New Rochelle

St. Peter before the Sanhedrin
(artist unknown)

“It’s impossible for us not to speak about what we’ve seen and heard” (Acts 4: 20).

Peter and John, as well as the rest of the 12 and numerous other disciples, like Mary Magdalene, “out of whom Jesus had driven 7 demons” (Mark 16:9), all witnesses of Risen Jesus, must proclaim the works of Jesus, the “abundance of [God’s] grace,” as the collect phrases it.  They must proclaim the resurrection and the new life promised “to every creature” in “the whole world,” according to Mark’s version of the great commission (16:15).

Peter, John, and the others were aware of their failures.  They’d experienced—maybe more times than the gospels tell us—Jesus’ forgiveness and patience, “the abundance of [divine] grace.”  They’d experienced his “looking with favor on those [he had] chosen” (Collect).  That mercy was more precious than physical cures or nature miracles, more powerful than human nature and our spiritual ailments.  That mercy gives meaning to the resurrection and makes Jesus worth proclaiming “to every creature.”

In these days the Church thanks God the Father for the “increase to the peoples who believe in” him, “those reborn thru the sacrament of Baptism” (Collect) and their faith in Jesus.  In France alone, it’s reported that 10,000 people entered the Church at Easter, far more than in any year in recent memory.  Perhaps those thousands were influenced in part by the life and example of Pope Francis, and perhaps in part by the national trauma and rebirth of Notre Dame Cathedral.  If that latter suggestion is valid, then we may say that our Lady’s hand has been at work in this spurt of belief.

So we pray that God’s grace continue to give increase, that it may persist in those who’ve answered God’s choice and been clothed in grace, that France, e.g., might reclaim her ancient title “eldest daughter of the Church,” which harks back to the conversion of King Clovis and his Frankish kingdom in 496.  We pray that growth in the number of God’s children continue everywhere and that the children who’ve run away from their Father in Western Europe, North America, and everywhere—who’ve abandoned the Church if not the faith entirely—might return like the prodigal son.

The growth in faith and the maintenance of healthy faith among those who do believe depends on the courageous faith, practice, and preaching of apostles like Peter and John.  We keep in mind our mission to the young and to their families.  In this 150th year of our missions, we keep in mind those who have yet to hear the Good News that God “raised Jesus Christ the Nazorean from the dead,” as we heard Peter preach yesterday (Acts 4:10), so that in Jesus’ name salvation be offered to the whole human race (4:12).

It’s impossible that Don Bosco’s sons and daughters, called and chosen by grace to be apostles, not speak about what they’ve seen and heard—in the power of the Scriptures, in the power of the sacred liturgy, in the testimony of the lives of the saints, in our own experience of God’s grace touching our souls.  “My strength and my courage is the Lord, and he has been my savior.  I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord” (Ps 118:14,17).