4/23/2015 – Thursday of the 3rd week of Easter – Acts 8:26-40

      Sometimes, our reading from Sacred Scripture can be so compelling and so vivid that it may seem like a movie or theater production enfolding right before our very eyes.  In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles today, we hear about an Ethiopian Eunuch who receives the call to journey to Jerusalem to worship God, a God that he really doesn’t know about and really doesn’t understand.  The Lord sends Philip to greet this Eunuch, to teach him about this reading from the prophet Isaiah that the Eunuch had been trying to read, to teach him about the Lord of Life. Philip disappears from scene just as quickly as he appeared, just like a super hero in a Hollywood movie.  The Lord sent Philip to another land to spread the word of God to others.  Yet, before he leaves, Philip baptized the Eunuch in a body of water that they came upon.

       We hear about such miraculous stories of faith in Sacred Scripture, of how the Lord touches the hearts of different people, bringing them to him through great odds and difficult circumstances.  There is a lot of mythology associated with the saint we celebrate today – St George.  His name probably brings to our mind the image of this courageous saint slaying a dragon – certainly some of the mythology that has sprung up about him throughout history.  We do know that George was a Roman soldier who rose to the rank of officer and who was born in the latter part of the 3^rd century before the Roman Empire officially recognized Christianity. The Roman Emperor Diocletian put George to death for his unwillingness to give up his Christian faith.  George became one of the most venerated Catholic saints, having become the patron of Crusaders and soldiers, and having been depicted often in iconography. 

        All of us face challenges in our journey of faith in one way or another. We can see in the story of the Eunuch how we are called to go out of our way to discover more about our faith, to find out more about what we don’t understand. We can see in the story of St George a calling to stand up for our faith in the midst of great adversity.  May the Lord continue to lead us and guide us along our journey of faith.  May he set our hearts on fire with a love of God and a curiosity and vigor to always want to learn more and to grow in the ways of faith.