Saturday, April 17, 2004
Octave of Easter

1st Reading: Acts 4:13-21
Gospel: Mk 16:9-15

After Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary of Magdala from whom he had driven out seven demons. She went and reported the news to his followers, who were now mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he lived and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.

After this he showed himself in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. These men too went back and told the others, but they did not believe them.

Later Jesus showed himself to the Eleven while they were at table. He reproached them for their unbelief and stubbornness in refusing to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.

Then he told them, "Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation."

Commentary

IS the faith something you "have", or something you "do"? The simplest words in the language are the most difficult to understand: God, faith, hope, love, soul, mind and those real chestnuts: have, do, be.

They don't appear to be difficult, because we use them so fluently and so often. But look at any one of them and tell me what it means. If I ask no question about your answer, we may think the matter is clear; but if I ask a second or a third question we are both in the depths! Our faith is a bottomless ocean. How could it be otherwise? St. Paul prays that the Ephesians, "knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge [will be] filled with the utter fullness of God" (Eph 3:19). God cannot be our "possession" in the way we possess other things; it is the other way around: we are possessed by God.

We call "fundamentalist" those people who fix their faith in some text as in concrete, casting aside every other consideration. It is a waste of a good word; they are not fundamentalists; they are superficialists, like the Pharisees. Neither are they traditionalists: they cast tradition aside and fix on their own interpretation of the texts.

Our faith takes us beyond all our ready categories. Speak of it, if we will, as something we "have"; but it is safer to think of it as something we "do", and even something that we "are", by God's gift.

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