4/14/2015 – Tuesday of the 2nd week of Easter - Acts 4: 32 – 37

      Today, we hear about the community of believers in the Early Church being of one heart & mind, with no one claiming any of his possessions was his own, but the community holding everything in common.  The Apostles bore witness to the resurrection of our Lord through the way they lived out their daily lives, both individually and as a community.

      There is an obvious question for us to address today in light of this reading: How does the resurrection of Jesus in our world today affect our actions, our deeds, our aspirations, and our dreams?  For St. Paul, for the apostles, and for the writers of the Gospels, Christ’s resurrection was at the core of their identity - it was at the center of their faith. The resurrection is all about the new life we experience in our own lives. It is about dying with Christ in the waters of our baptism, and rising with him into new life, a new life that is with us every day afterwards. 

      When I spent a summer studying in Argentina, I got to visit some of the Jesuit missions on the border with Brazil and Paraguay dating from the 17^th & 18^th centuries that brought about a special missionary endeavor that is unique in the history of the Church.  The Jesuit missionaries lived with the native people of the Guarani tribe, working the land and holding everything they had in common. They modeled their lifestyle after early Church communities described in the Acts of the Apostles, reflecting the risen Lord in a very real way in their lives.  There are some Christians today who somewhat thumb their noses at the missionaries, who see them as these far-out liberals who are out of step with the Church and out of step with the values of the Gospel, but when you look at our Church’s missionaries, going all the way back to St Paul, you can see how a lot of what they have done is such a great example for all of us to learn from.  As we journey through the Easter season, may we feel Jesus in the way he is present to us in our lives, in the many ways he reaches out to us, and in the many ways he calls us to live out our faith.