5/4/2017 – Homily - Thursday of 3rd week of Easter – Acts 8:26-40

     Sometimes, Scripture and the characters they describe can seem so vivid and imaginative, almost like characters out of a novel or a movie.  In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear about a court official to the Queen of the Ethiopians who receives the call to journey to Jerusalem to worship God, a God who he really doesn’t know about and that he doesn’t understand.  The Lord sends Philip to greet this court official, to teach him about the reading from the prophet Isaiah that the Eunuch is trying to understand, to teach him about the Lord of Life. Philip disappears from this scene just as quickly as he appeared, as he is sent to another land to spread the word of God to others. Yet, before he leaves, Philip baptizes this court official in a body of water that they come 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 through difficult circumstances.  We often take our faith for granted, don’t we, not wanting to be inconvenienced in the obligations we have in our faith or finding excuses why we don’t spend time with the Lord.  We are called to be inspired by today’s reading, of how this non-Christian court official goes out of his way to discover more about the faith and to find out more about what he doesn’t understand about God.   
       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 the curiosity to always want to learn more and to grow in the ways of faith.