Readings: Acts 16:11-15; Psalm 149; John 15:26-16:4.
When some things happen in life, we are shocked, we do not expect them, we cannot explain, they beat our imagination and expectation.
At the beginning of this year, if someone had told us that we would not be able to gather in Church for the Easter celebrations or that we would stay at home for weeks and months, we probably would not have believed. At the beginning of this year when we were planning our programs for the year, we never expected that things would turn out this way.
I know someone who had planned to celebrate his 40th birthday like a holy day of obligation, he started planning since last year, the birthday was to be in April. Sadly, the birthday, which was supposed to be a solemnity, was celebrated like an optional memorial.
We are completely stupefied by this situation, made worse by the uncertainty of whether or not, life could ever return to what we were familiar with.
However, God does not experience this shock, this surprise, and this lack of preparedness that we are all experiencing. He foresaw this, He is omniscient, He knows all things, He sees the end from the beginning, His knowledge is not limited by time or space, and nothing comes to Him as a shock or surprise.
In today’s gospel, he told his disciples about what would happen to them- they would be expelled, persecuted, tormented and tortured. And he said, “I have told you all this that your faith may not be shaken…so that when the time for it comes you may remember that I told you.”
The disciples would go through challenging times that might shake their faith and confuse them but the Lord was preparing their minds and opening their hearts to be able to understand this when it happened.
In the first reading also, we see the Lord opening the mind of a devout woman named Lydia. What Paul and his companions were saying made so much sense to her because the Lord enlightened the eyes of her mind, she received a revelation.
The Greek word is diēnoixen (διήνοιξεν τὴν καρδίαν). The Lord unlocked her heart. This was also used in Luke 24:45- Jesus opened the minds of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. This opening of mind is a gift of the Holy Spirit and it is called understanding.
We stand in great need of this gift. Let us pray today that the Lord who opened the minds of the disciples to understand what would happen to them, the Lord who unlocked the heart of Lydia will open our minds too to understand the things happening in our world today from divine perspective, to make sense of the things happening in our lives right now.
This divine perspective to things helps us to see that things, which immediately appear so confusing and terrible, may not be all together negative.
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Okami on May 18, 2020