Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Today's Mass Readings

“[Paul] remained for two full years in his lodgings. He received all who came to him, and with complete assurance and without hindrance, he proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.” Acts 28:30,31

So we come to the end of the Acts of the Apostles as we come near the end of the holy Easter Season. Likewise, in our Gospel, the Church finishes her readings of St. John’s Gospel.
With the coming of Pentecost, we will be reminded that it is now, as it were, our turn. It is our turn to testify, by our lives and, as appropriate, by our words, to the gift of God given in Jesus. We do that always by our lives, by how we live. It is by our willingness to allow the Lord of history to be Lord of our lives, the Lord of our time on this earth.

The Holy Spirit of Jesus has already come to us and continues to come to us. Otherwise we could not testify that Jesus Christ is Lord! St. Paul VI put it this way:

The Church remains in the world when the Lord of glory returns to the Father. She remains as a sign – simultaneously obscure and luminous – of a new presence of Jesus, of His departure, and of His permanent presence. She prolongs and continues Him. And it is above all His mission and His condition of being an evangelizer that she is called upon to continue. For the Christian community is never closed in upon itself. The intimate life of this community – the life of listening to the Word and the apostles’ teaching, charity lived in a fraternal way, the sharing of bread, this intimate life only acquires its full meaning when it becomes a witness, when it evokes admiration and conversion, and when it becomes the preaching and proclamation of the Good News. (Evangelii Nuntiandi #15)

Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB