TRACING OUR ROOTS FORWARD Easter 2 2026

Fr Lou uses Acts to trace our roots from the early Church into the Future

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst. He said to them, Peace be with you. When he said this he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them, Peace be with you again, as the Father has sent me, I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said, Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained. Thomas, called Didymus, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, We have seen the Lord. He said, Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the nail marks, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. Now a week later his disciples were with him again, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, Peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands, bring your hand and put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believe. Jesus said to him, Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not recorded in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this faith you may have life in his name. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scriptures bring us forward, backward, and well into the future today. We look at the scriptures and the origins, actions of the apostles, teach us something about the early church. When Saint Luke recorded this book, The Acts of the Apostles, he indicated that this was the second volume of his books. First volume being the actions of Jesus, the gospel, second volume being the actions of the apostles, which we read from tonight. And he gives us an indication that sounds so perfect. They all got together, they all believed, they all had common bread, they shared everything, they prayed constantly, they enjoyed God's favor, and God kept adding to them. Now that last piece, we read anything in the last few weeks in the newspapers, we realized that God is still adding to us. The number of Catholics that have come into the church this Easter season is phenomenal. The secular media finds it interesting and challenging. New York Times does, the secular media, or whatever religious media we use, the internet. What's going on? So many more people are coming into the Catholic Church. Well, you know, that was predicted. Jesus knew that was going to happen. He even added, as Luke put, many were added to that number. Well, you and I are part of that number, and it should always be our goal to bring others in, to have our family, friends, those who don't know God, come in to the church. Not only come into the church, but come into the sacraments of the church. So that's why we're here, because today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is celebrated, as you know, for 50 days until Pentecost. So the resurrection of Jesus is the most important event of our existence. Everybody, I'm sure, I wouldn't raise, ask you to raise any hands, knows about Artemis, too. The whole world's eyes were on TV or internet in the last few weeks, few days, last 10 days. And we were able to see Otomists take off and go around to the other side of the moon and thank God, and we pray for the crew, we pray for NASA, we pray for our country, and they landed safely, which is good, but it's not unusual because it gave us an eye-opening to what we do as Christians. We pray to God who is Almighty, who is the creator of all, and what the cameras were able to give us were insights of the moon, of the earth from the moon, of the stars of creation. Magnificent pictures came from NASA. But those pictures are pictures of what our God put there. Those were pictures that our God shows as part of his creation. So as we look to the Acts of the Apostles and Luke's rendition of the early church, getting along, celebrating, breaking bread, people being added to their number, that's happening as the world opens their eyes, its eyes, to what is out there beyond our imagination. What God has planned, we don't even know. But through the ingenuity of minds, great minds, we were able to go beyond a distance we've never gone before. I say we, I mean those who represent the United States, NASA, and Canada. We go beyond what we can imagine. And we don't have to imagine as much because we saw so many graphics, so many pictures. We saw the heroic rescue. We saw people being lifted up out of these capsules. But they were doing their job as members of NASA. We as Christians look at that, I hope, and realize they're talking about my God. They're talking about my Creator. And Jesus led the Holy Spirit to fill the early church with more people. And as we compare NASA to the news, we realize those more people are coming in today. More are entering our church. So you got a picture of the past, and I have to say that Luke made it ideal. Later theologians tell us that it was never that easy. People didn't come together, and everybody'd love each other and share with the poor and gather and broke bread and praise God every day, and great numbers came. It was a prediction as well as a recollection, as well as a challenge that was recorded in Acts of the Apostles. So it's for us. I always remind myself that the scriptures are written for us. This is our story. And we know that the world is spiritually anxious in so many ways. We know that the world is suffering in so many ways. Well, to counter that, we have the scriptures today of the Gospel of John, in which all these wonderful apostles just met Jesus. He came back from the dead, and now he's with us in this upper room. The door's locked, but he's there. This is great. But somebody's missing. Thomas is missing. Finally, Thomas shows up, Jesus is gone at that moment. Oh, wait, we've seen Jesus, we've seen Jesus. And his response is the response of the world so often. Everybody in the world? No. The element in the world that is still seeped, steeped in anger and greed and hate and non-belief. Thomas, we've seen Jesus. Nah, I don't believe it. Well, no, he came, he sat with us, you know, he talked to us. Nah. I mean, think of the boldness of Thomas. He knew Jesus hung on the cross. He probably saw him go up to Calvary. He probably heard about the scourging under Pilate and by the Praetorian guard. Thomas, we just saw Jesus. He was here today. Nah, I don't believe it. Think of the boldness of Thomas, his, how can I say, stubbornness? To say, unless I stick my finger in his wounds and his side, I'm not going to believe. Go away with this story. And then John records it the following week. And he says, following week, Thomas was with them. And Jesus appeared. Jesus appeared to you and me. Jesus is appearing to you and me every day. We have doubts. We have despairs. We have anger in our lives. Through all of that, Jesus is still coming to us. Jesus is still available to us. And what we do with that gift from God, His Son, is really up to us. When Jesus finally spoke with Thomas, stick your hand right here, go ahead, touch me. I'm real me. It's flesh and blood. The guy you knew for three years, the guy you denied, the guy you ran away from as he hung on the cross, it's me. I'm back. In a way that no one could ever imagine. When we went around the moon, we saw scenes that we could never imagine. Oh, the the textbooks and the astronomers show us pictures, but we saw it where we could never imagine. A tiny part of God's creation. So he tells Thomas, it's really me. And he wants Thomas's faith. Only Thomas can give him his faith. Just like you and me. God gives us the gift. It's up to us what we do with the faith we have in him. Are we going to fulfill Luke's goal of looking at the early church, people who love one another, people who broke bread together, people who forgave one another, people who took care of the poor, and the list goes on. That's what the early apostles were doing in the Acts of the Apostles. And that's what Luke is telling us. We still have that gift. That book of Luke was written probably around 70, but it still goes on. We gather today to break bread. We're gathered today to greet each other. We're gathered today to hear the word of God. We're gathered today to witness Jesus in the Eucharist. It still goes on. And we who are people who carry the book in our hearts received the same Holy Spirit. When Jesus breathed on the apostles, he repeated Exodus and all the books of the Old Testament right back to Genesis. And the story of Genesis, you want to see an image of Genesis? Look at the headlines in the newspapers in the last few days about Artemis. And God created the stars, the moon, the sky. And our faith goes back to that. And we hear in Genesis the Chrucha, the breath of God descending on all that was. And that's how creation is recorded for us in the book of Genesis. God's breath, life-giving. It's the Spirit. When Jesus comes back to his apostles and he breathes on them, he passed on his spirit to them. And when you and I were confirmed and baptized, that same spirit came to us. We may not think we're apostles, but we are. Jesus sent us into the world to make his word known and his actions in daily living. Yeah, we have the apostles came together and they broke bread and all that. But it didn't stop. It kept going on, which is remarkable. And Jesus comes to his disciples in the scriptures today and reminds them you've come to believe because you've seen me. Blessed are you. He's talking about us who have not seen and yet believed. When the books close and we go home, our story continues. To bring the hope of Jesus to others, to bring the hope of Jesus where there's despair and hurt and greed and prejudice and war. Our goal is to be the early apostles who were sent into the world, this beautiful creation that we have yet to really 100% appreciate. But we have Jesus, and he's part of that eternal creation, and he inspires us through the Holy Spirit to carry on his work with joy and sharing and love. Happy Easter? Yes. Today? Yes. Fifty days from now? Yes. Every day of our lives. Yes. Happy Easter.