Sometimes, our reading from Sacred Scripture can be so compelling and so vivid
that it may seem like a movie or theater production enfolding right before our
very eyes. In
our reading from the Acts of the Apostles today, we hear about an Ethiopian
Eunuch who receives the call to journey to Jerusalem to worship God, a God that
he really doesn’t know about and really doesn’t understand. The
Lord sends Philip to greet this Eunuch, to teach him about this reading from
the prophet Isaiah that the Eunuch had been trying to read, to teach him about
the Lord of Life. Philip disappears from scene just as quickly as he appeared, just like a super
hero in a Hollywood movie. The Lord sent
Philip to another land to spread the word of God to others. Yet,
before he leaves, Philip baptized the Eunuch in a body of water that they came
upon.
We
hear about such miraculous stories of faith in Sacred Scripture, of how the
Lord touches the hearts of different people, bringing them to him through great
odds and difficult circumstances. There
is a lot of mythology associated with the saint we celebrate today – St George. His
name probably brings to our mind the image of this courageous saint slaying a
dragon – certainly some of the mythology that has sprung up about him
throughout history. We do
know that George was a Roman soldier who rose to the rank of officer and who
was born in the latter part of the 3rd century before the Roman
Empire officially recognized Christianity. The
Roman Emperor Diocletian put George to death for his unwillingness to give up
his Christian faith. George became one of the most venerated Catholic saints, having become the
patron of Crusaders and soldiers, and having been depicted often in
iconography.
All
of us face challenges in our journey of faith in one way or another. We
can see in the story of the Eunuch how we are called to go out of our way to
discover more about our faith, to find out more about what we don’t understand.
We
can see in the story of St George a calling to stand up for our faith in the
midst of great adversity. May
the Lord continue to lead us and guide us along our journey of faith. May he set our hearts on fire with a love of
God and a curiosity and vigor to always want to learn more and to grow in the
ways of faith.
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