Saturday, April 25, 2015
St. Mark, Evangelist
1st Reading: 1 P 5:5b–14Gospel: Mk 16:15–20s
Jesus told his disciples, “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; the one who refuses to believe will be condemned. Signs like these will accompany those who have believed: in my Name they will cast out demons and speak new languages; they will pick up snakes and, if they drink anything poisonous, they will be unharmed. They will lay their hands on the sick and they will be healed.”
“So then, after speaking to them, the Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven and took his place at the right hand of God. The Eleven went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs which accompanied them.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
Because people embrace hard truths through evidences that are unimpeachable, Jesus gave each disciple extraordinary powers to evangelize all people. None among us today can perform these powers with credibility. Yet the mission to evangelize is handed down to us to exercise with the same alacrity. Spectacular powers were indispensable then, but no longer now because the Church is already well established from within. We can trace our history back to Jesus through the hierarchy; there is no need to establish our identity as evangelizers through the extraordinary. What is needed is witnessing to the words that we say by living a life of charity.
This is not to discard miraculous powers as irrelevant. Such powers, if available, can convert the defiant. Miraculous healers are marvelous to behold; they bring back a lot of people to God’s fold. There is danger, however, with most miracles; they attract instant adherers from curious peoples. Like anything instant, depth is wanting and their hearts remain distant.
A priest newly assigned to a parish quite remote had this story of a crying statue to promote. A fellow priest remarked in jest hoping he’d desist: “the statue is just missing the former parish priest.” Attendance at Mass was high as many people wanted to see the statue cry. When the euphoria subsided, the attendance graph at Mass also glided.
Let us perform our duty to evangelize all peoples even without the power to perform miracles. Greater is the miracle really if people know we are the first doers of what we say. The spectacular may generate faith but cannot sustain it. Let’s go for a life of charity so people can feel it. When they do, faith in them will grow even stronger than the spectacular can brew. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.
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