We hear about Peter and John heading off to the Temple to pray when a lame man stops them and ask them for help. This results in the miraculous healing of this man, a sign Peter and John give of God’s kingdom. And that is the point of a miracle. It is not the miracle itself that draws our attention, but rather the power and truth behind the miracle, the way it teaches us about God’s kingdom and about our faith.
When we think about this story, we might think about aspects of our faith that weave in and out of journey. We have the reality of the resurrection, a reality that we celebrate in a special way during the Easter season. Jesus tried to help the disciples understand this reality. He is not alive again in a purely earthly way. He is not a ghost. He is resurrected. The resurrection is a new reality the disciples are trying to understand. But, also, there is still the reality of the cross. The resurrection does not exist in isolation by itself; with it always is the reality of the cross. Christ suffered and died in order to be raised from the dead. Also, in addition to the resurrection and the cross, there is still the need for repentance. We heard the call for repentance very clearly during the season of Lent. It is a theme in our reading today in the Easter season as well. We are to feel the urgency to repent and to renew our lives again and again as disciples of Christ.
Today, in the midst of the Octave of Easter, the first week of the Easter season, we have the feast day of St Anselm of Canterbury. He was born in the 11th century in the kingdom of Burgundy in Europe. After serving as a Benedictine monk and abbot in Normandy, France, he was named as the Archbishop of Canterbury in England at the age of 60. Anselm is also remembered as one of the great theologians and philosophers of Western Christianity. He is known as the Father of Scholasticism, a method of learning and reason that was employed in philosophy and theology for hundreds of year. He was named Doctor of the Church in 1720. Anselm spent many years in exile while serving as Archbishop of Canterbury as he attempted to defend the faith against kings who tried to assert their own will over the Church. As we reflect on the resurrected Christ during the octave of Easter, I will close from a quote from St Anselm, which is reflective of the way he practiced his faith: “For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe this: unless I believe, I will not understand.”
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