2nd Sunday of Easter Fr. Leo
The essence of being the Catholic Church is that we are gathered in faith as a community to become “Christ.” The Church offers us the sacraments to help us grow in the Holy Spirit that makes us sharers in the Christ’s divinity. Our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles highlights the communal aspect of the church. All held everything in common. It was not just a common faith, but a faith lived out in complete trust and sharing with fellow believers.
This idea is foreign to us. As Americans, we want our independence. Our own homes and families. This is not bad, but when carried to the extreme, it lacks sense of living in community with others. Making it harder to see other’s needs as our own.
The monastic life is the closest to what we see in our reading. They literally hold all things in common and give what is in excess to the poor. We need to let that inspire us to at least give of ourselves in many ways to our fellow believers. I would wager that doing so would reduce the stress and alienation that is so much a part of our lives. Living for others, is the way to true peace and joy. It is something money can not buy. Just as you can not buy heaven, we can chose to live in the kingdom now and at the hour of our death.
In our second reading from the letter of John, we are given the foundation of true faith in the last words of the passage. “The Spirit is the one that testifies, and the Spirit is Truth.” What confirms our faith, is the Spirit dwelling with-in-us. We can do all the externals of religion, but in the end it is the authentic Spirit that makes our faith real, because it is only then that we live sharing in the Spirit of Christ as adopted sons and daughters of God. This is what it means to share in the divinity of Christ.
Our Gospel is a classic. The one who struggles with believing, becomes the one who declares for the first time that Jesus is the Son of God. Thomas, meaning twin, our twin if you will, needed his own experience of the Risen Christ. While many of us may believe on the strength of others witness, as we grow in the Holy Spirit, we come to know in the depths of our beings the presence of God. And there comes a moment when we believe without reason that the love of God is the fountain of our true and eternal joy! Beyond reason, the spirit in our hearts cries out Abba, Father.