The eternal truth
If we believe in His omnipresence, then we must accept His message
By Norm McGraw
Wouldn’t He be able to fill all our spiritual needs? As Tuesday’s psalm states, God will be “my rock of refuge, a stronghold to give me safety. You are my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake you will lead and guide me.” (Psalm 31:3cd-4, 6)
Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter
Acts 7:51—8:1a
John 6:35ab
Before I begin my reflection, I must tell you of the joy that I feel in my heart, as well as so many Catholics and people all over the world, with the announcement of the new pope, Leo XIV. Not only is he the first American pope, but he’s from Chicago, my hometown. May God bless and guide him in his ministry to the world.
While I was composing my reflections for Tuesday, May 6th, Biblical readings, my thoughts drifted to a memorable scene from a popular 1992 military courtroom drama in which the chief witness reacts to aggressively pointed questions asked of the defensive attorney by shouting back, “You can’t handle the truth!”
Holy Scripture is the manual presenting the eternal truth from God. If we believe in His omnipresence, then we must accept His message along with His everlasting and all-encompassing love for us.
In Tuesday’s gospel reading from St. John, after Jesus miraculously feeds a crowd of five thousand along the shore at the sea of Tiberias during the time of Passover, he remarks, “Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” He then explains that “the bread of God is that which comes from heaven and gives life to the world.” Jesus tells us that we can always have this bread with us because he “is the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever comes to me will never thirst.”
Wow. That’s a heavy concept to digest.
But not beyond the power of the Almighty that created us. Wouldn’t He be able to fill all our spiritual needs? As Tuesday’s psalm states, God will be “my rock of refuge, a stronghold to give me safety. You are my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake you will lead and guide me.”
However, there can be serious consequences to following God’s commands, as described in the 2nd reading of May 6th, from the 7th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Stephen, a devout convert, was stoned to death for spreading the Word of God. As he lay seriously wounded, “he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” After he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” he asked God not to hold his executioners’ sin against them. Then he expired.
An interesting footnote to this event, the passage continues, is that Saul, a known hater of all Christians, approved of Stephen’s execution. The silver lining to the tragedy of Stephen’s death was the transformation of Saul, who hunted down every Christian for execution, to St. Paul, the man who spread Christianity throughout the vast stretches of the Roman Empire.
Probably, God will not ask us to make the sacrifice that Stephen made. However, He does exhort us to “live His truth” by performing simple Christian acts in our lives, like daily prayer. In the 5th chapter of St. Paul’s 1st letter to the Thessalonians, he comments that with prayer, we “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for us.”
The Almighty also encourages us to perform acts of kindness. In the 6th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he states, “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season, we will reap, if we do not give up.”
With prayer and good works, we can follow the divine plan that Jesus lays out for us in the 14th chapter of John: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”