4/27/2017 – homily - Thursday of 2nd week of Easter – Acts 5:27-32

     Do we sometimes feel like we are guided by a higher authority that contradicts the laws of our secular world?  That is what the apostles profess today before the Sanhedrin, that they are following a higher authority that dictates their consciences and influences their actions, an authority that is sometimes in conflict with civil authority.The Sanhedrin issued an edict that the apostles refrain from preaching the Gospel, but Peter and his companions declare that they must obey God and not man.  We see situations like this in our modern world as well. We Catholics in modern America live in a land where capital punishment is practiced and condoned by our secular society, where abortion is legal and viewed a way to get rid of an unwanted or inconvenient pregnancy.  Even our own Diocese sued the federal government several years ago, along with other Catholic Dioceses and institutions to protest that provisions in insurance plans that we were forced to follow that violate the Gospel of Life.  By refusing to obey the authorities, Peter and his companions have put their lives in danger.  Even though they had just seen their Lord crucified, they felt compelled to speak out and to follow their conscience. They knew that God had raised up Jesus, but that human beings had killed him.

    Daniel Berrigan was listed in the Give Us This Day devotional this week as one of the holy people of the day.  Berrigan, a Jesuit priest, died on April 30 of last year at the age of 95.  Berrigan was considered a leading voice of the anti-war movement in the Vietnam War era.  Having seized and destroyed some files from a draft board in Maryland, Berrigan was convicted and spent two years in prison for this action.  He was arrested numerous times for his peace activism.  Daniel Berrigan and his brother Philip, who was also a priest, were heroes to many college students and young Catholics.  Daniel later worked with AIDS patients in the early years of the epidemic of that disease when there was much fear and hysteria going around.  As I read the story of Daniel Berrigan, I thought about our reading from Acts today, about how Berrigan’s actions must have taken as much courage and tenacity as Peter and his companions summoned within  them.  Yes, sometimes following the will of God in our lives takes a lot of courage, a lot of faith.