Are you fully engaged in living your faith?
Our readings for Divine Mercy
Sunday focus on stories of faith. In
John’s Gospel, coming to the fullness of faith means moving out of the upper
room – where the apostles are hiding out of fear
– and into the world, where faith can transform us. Thomas, who missed Jesus’s earlier appearance
to the disciples, realizes perhaps better than any of them the fullness of
faith to which Jesus has invited him.
Without even touching Jesus’s wounds, Thomas responds, My Lord and my God, articulating an insight his friends have not
yet come to, entering into a profound place of faith, already proclaiming the Good News!
Our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles demonstrates – in a kind of idealized representation of communal
life – the deep faith the disciples finally do embrace. Living as best they can for other, their faith is very much alive
for them, directing their lives, their decisions, their days. They have chosen a lifestyle in which the
relationship they have with Christ is the totality of their identity, their
hope, their ideal, their aim. And so
they proclaim the Good News with their very lives, breaking bread together,
praying together, supporting one another in every way they can. They daily give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, and his love is indeed everlasting
(Psalm 118); they give witness as one body to God’s activity in their lives, to
God’s love and care and salvation. What would make us so radically change
our lives so as to live our faith so fully, so that our very lives would be a proclamation of the Good News?
Our second reading from 1 Peter
reaffirms the radical living hope
expressed in the first reading. If God’s
love is the core of our faith, if we allow that love to keep unfolding, every
day, holding on to transcendence, engaging God in the present moment with all
of our being, then heaven is indeed
possible. If our faith is genuine and we rest knowing we are safeguarded through faith, then indescribable and glorious joy, radical joy is indeed possible…
Are you fully engaged in living your
faith?
Are you willing to radically
change your life so as to do so?
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
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