Peter
and John headed off to the Temple to pray when a lame man stopped them and ask
them for some help. Instead
of just giving this man alms, they heal him through the help of the Holy
Spirit. This man
is so overjoyed; he leaps around and shouts praises to God. This commotion draws the attention of a
large crowd, giving Peter the opportunity to preach to the people about Jesus. They tell the crowd about what happened to
their Lord. They want the people to
repent, to change their lives, to become followers of the Lord. That is
the thing about miracles. It is not the
miracle itself that draws our attention, but rather the power and the truth
behind that miracle, the way it teaches us about God’s kingdom and about our
faith.
We hear
a lot about repentance in our Catholic faith, that is for sure. “Repent and believe in the Gospel”: that was
the admonition we each had proclaimed to us at our Ash Wednesday liturgy as we
received a smudge of ash on our foreheads. How we
respond to the resurrection of Christ and how his resurrection becomes a
reality in our lives of faith is what this joyful Easter season is all about. What are so little things we can do to live out the resurrection in our lives? How can we reach out to others in the spirit of the resurrection?
May we
hear the message of Christ in the words of Peter and John today. We need
to be comforted by the Good News of Christ, yet we also need to radically
repent and to bring this message of repentance to our world.
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