The Catholic Calendar for Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter
St. Philip and St. James, apostles

Scripture from today's Liturgy of the Word:
1 Corinthians 15:1-8
Psalm 19:2-5
John 14:6-14

A reflection on today's Sacred Scripture:

I have to chuckle when I hear today’s gospel. We find the Lord once again teaching his closest followers, who sometimes seem to be His biggest skeptics. After telling Thomas that He is “the way, the truth and the life,” and that they have seen the Father through Him, we hear Philip say, well, Lord, just show us the Father and that will be OK with us, as if he never heard a thing Jesus had said. I get my chuckle since this is so typically human.

I get a sense that the Lord was a bit frustrated at this point and He tries to teach them once again, telling them that whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father, plain and simple. Further, since He knows the human way of thinking about these things, He adds, “or else, believe because of the works themselves.” In other words, “if you don’t believe what I am saying just look at the miracles, the masses of people seeking me and the entire body of works I have done in your presence and that should show you what is going on here.”

We must have a little faith, as it seems we tend to not believe what we hear and witness. Without faith in our living God, we cannot believe and without belief in Him we are bound to believe most anything else, all of it something other than the way, the truth and the life.

- Don Claunch, SFO
(dlclaunch at bresnan dot net)