HOMILY FOR TUESDAY OF THE 5TH WEEK OF EASTER
THEME: PEACE, NOT AS THE WORLD GIVES!
BY: Ben Agbo (Rev Fr)
HOMILY FOR TUESDAY MAY 17 2022
*Act 14 : 19 – 28, Jn 14 : 27 – 31.
I am just wondering what kind of man St Paul was? We are told in today’s 1st reading that after being stoned and beaten to coma, the disciples gathered around him and he rose up and entered the same city (Lystra) and continued preaching. Where went his feelings of pain and fear? Where went his instincts of self survival/ self defense? I mean, was he still a normal human being?
Jesus encourages us in today’s gospel not to let our hearts ever be troubled because the heart is the center of the entire body physiology; the heart is like the fuel pump of a car, once it is bad, a car grounds and can’t move. The engine (like the kidney) does not get energy supply anymore. The liver (like the fuel filter of a car) stops cleaning the bad fuel. The brain (like the brain box of a car) also stops relaying signals – and that is what we call death physiologically. Jesus promises to give us a kind of peace that is beyond the normal physical and psychological dispensation – a fuel supply that is cleaner than what any refineries can do, a fuel pump that will never fail us – a stable blood pressure that is beyond any medical understanding.
Jesus says that the ruler of this world is coming but he has no power over him and his believers. What does he mean by that? But they killed him and killed the whole apostles including St Paul. His peace does not mean absence of pain, hostility, persecutions, sicknesses… But an inner strength; an inner joy that overcomes this pain. St Paul was beaten but not broken, bruised but not battered, besieged but not bewildered. In his own words he encourages us; ‘In times of honour or disgrace, blame or praise; taken for impostors and yet we are genuine; unknown and yet we are acknowledged; dying and yet here we are, alive; scourged but not executed; in pain yet always full of joy; poor and yet making many people rich; having nothing, and yet owning everything’, 2 Cor 6 : 8 – 10. Yes, his kind of peace is a peace that is different from what the world gives. According to Donna Wallis, God’s method in times of storm is mysterious; ‘Sometimes God calms the storms, and sometimes He let’s the storm rage and calms His child’. May God bless you today!