Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies Podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke Glory to you, O Lord.
Jesus said to his disciples, Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things, and behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you.
But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.
Then he led them out as far as Bethany, raised his hands and blessed them as he blessed them. He parted from them and was taken up to heaven.
They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy.
And they were continually in the temple praising God, the Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. My earliest memories as a child are of my dad screaming and ranting, red faced, surprisingly not at me.
But he was yelling at the TV because the Lions were on.
And because we're all a mixture of nature and nurture, I have the same reactions.
So much so that in my high school days my mother would leave on Sunday afternoons because she couldn't handle it.
But those of you who would consider yourselves Lions fans noticed one thing. About two and a half seasons ago, things changed all of a sudden. Rather than figuring out how in the world are they going to lose this in the last five minutes of the game, we could even be behind and say they're going to be all right, they'll still pull it out.
And I think for me, even though we all had a tough January when they lost in the playoffs, with five months of hindsight behind it, I actually think their season was more impressive than if they simply had an easy year and won the Super Bowl.
They had two dozen starters go down with injury and they were pulling players out of nowhere, putting them in and expecting them to perform.
And clearly they did because they had the best regular season record.
It just finally caught up with them.
And I think the reason for it is, for the first time, maybe the second time in my life, they actually had a coach that prepared them to play.
And not only prepared them, but expected the best out of them. Wasn't expecting a backup to come in and play poorly. That wasn't even part of the equation.
That's kind of what we're hearing here in the Gospel.
Jesus coached the initial church well. He coached his apostles to carry on his mission and his ministry and expected them to do it and to do it well.
And they did.
Now all you have to do is remember what they were like initially, where they were spouting off answers that weren't necessarily correct.
They were questioning things about who was more important than the other.
They were hiding, scared when he faced his passion.
So they weren't initially ready, but he prepared them.
And part of that preparation even happened after his resurrection when he showed them that when he appeared to them, it was going to be in sharing of a meal together. It was going to be in their relationship with others.
And they were so well coached and so well prepared that these weak and flawed men were changed.
And they were able to go out into the known world and proclaim the good News, do it extremely well, and do it fearlessly.
So much so that they even faced their own death.
Because of what they were sharing and because of their hard work, because they allowed Christ's spirit that was already a part of who they were, to come out of them, the faith spread like wildfire.
Well, that same spirit that enlivened their faith and gave them the strength they needed is the same Spirit that dwells in us.
And if we learn to allow Christ's spirit to truly guide and direct our actions and our thoughts, there's literally no limit to what we can do in the world as well.
We can truly make him present, just like they did.
