Bible
Study: Acts 22, 3 to 16. And Mark 16, 15 to 18.
This story
has been told several times and I consider it quite fitting to today’s
reflection. It is the story of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the Electric
bulb. When Edison’s team had fabricated that first light bulb, Edison turned
and surveyed each of his co-workers as if he was sizing each of them up. After
surveying them all, Edison handed the light bulb to a young boy who was helping
in the lab, entrusting him with the very delicate task of carrying the first
light bulb ever produced upstairs and placing it gently into a vacuum machine.
Needless
to say, this bulb was very precious and the boy knew it. Step by step he
cautiously watched his hands, obviously frightened of dropping such a priceless
piece of work. But the boy was concentrating so hard on making sure that the
bulb didn’t slip from his hands that he forgot to watch his feet. He tripped at
the top of the stairs and dropped the bulb and it shattered.
Undeterred
by the setback, Edison put his team back to work. Their effort to construct the
second light bulb consumed an additional 24 hours. Exhausted from so much work
and ready for a break, Edison was ready to have his bulb carried up the stairs
again. He once again looked around and surveyed each of his co-workers to
determine who would carry the bulb upstairs.
Everyone
was shocked when Edison selected the young boy who had dropped it the first
time. Edison knew that the boy was probably devastated by the first incident.
He decided to give the boy another chance. This time the boy successfully
completed his task.
Today we
celebrate the fact that God looked around all the men living in the world and
decided to give a second chance to the very man who was all out to destroy Christianity.
The same man who went about from house to house dragging Christians to jail,
the same man who supervised the stoning of the first Christian martyr, Stephen,
the same man whose zeal for the destruction of Christians would put him on a
missionary journey with letter of permission, became the greatest missionary to
promote the Christian Faith. That is God for you.
The beauty
of St. Paul’s conversion was that the moment he rose from his feet, he never
went back to his former ways. From that day, he saw himself as a completely different
person. According to St. Peter, if we repent, there should be no going back
otherwise, we become worse for it. 2nd Peter 2, 20 to 22 states: “For
if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and
overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it
would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness
than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was passed
on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, "The
dog turns back to its own vomit," and, "The sow is washed only to
wallow in the mud.”
May we
never return to our vomits in Jesus Name! As some people would say, no matter
how you wash a pig, it will look for mud again. My thinking is that the kind of
washing a pig requires is not the washing of the outer skin but the washing of
the heart, the washing of that which makes the pig love mud. This is what true
repentance means. It means changing your heart, changing the things that give
you joy, changing the things you love and desire even in secret. Repentance is
changing the things that make you love to dance in the mud, changing your belief
in yourself, it is telling yourself that you can do without sin, that you will
not die if you let go of those past behaviours.
When Saul
fell to the ground, he heard the voice of Christ saying: “Saul, Saul, why do
you persecute me?” Let us always remember that when we face persecution for the
sake of our faith, Jesus Christ himself shares in our pain. We do not even need
to cry because Jesus himself feels our sorrow. When we are dragged off, lied
upon, insulted or given names, it is Jesus himself who is dragged, it is Jesus
who is insulted. And he has said to us, “If they have called the master of the
house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! So have
no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and
nothing secret that will not become known.” Matthew 10, 25 to 26.
On the
other hand, just as Jesus feels our pain when we are persecuted, he also feels
it when we who carry his name on our lips disappoint him by sin. He is always
with us! We can never hide anything from him. Conscious of his presence in us,
we would not only stay away from sin, we would make use of His Power working
through us. As Jesus told us in today’s Gospel passage, “And these signs will
accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they
will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they
drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the
sick, and they will recover.” Mark 16, 17 to 18.
As far as
you repent today, your past does not matter anymore. Once you drop the old
ways, do not go back again. Invite Jesus into your heart and believe in his
presence with you always, believe you have the power to overcome sin, the power
even to raise back to life those aspects that were dead as a result of bad
habits.
Let us
Pray:
Lord
Jesus, give me the grace of total repentance today. Amen.
God bless you. Good morning. Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is
well with you. Happy new week.
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