One Minute Reflection – 19 April – “The Month of the Resurrection” – Feria Day, Wednesday in the Second Week of Easter – 1 John 5:4-10, John 20:19-31 – Scripture search here: https://www.drbo.org/
“Blessed are they who have not seen and have believed.” – John 20:29
REFLECTION – “The disciples’ weakness was so unsteady that, not content with seeing the Risen Lord, they still wanted to touch Him if they were to believe in Him. It was not enough for them to see Him with their eyes, they wanted to put out their hands to His limbs and touch the marks of His recent Wounds. It was after he had touched and acknowledged his scars that the unbelieving disciple cried out: “My Lord and my God!” Those scars revealed the One Who, where other people were concerned, healed every wound. Could the Lord not have Risen without scars? Yet He saw, within His disciples’ hearts, wounds which those scars He had preserved in His Body ,would heal.
And what does the Lord answer that confession of faith of His disciple, who says: “My Lord and my God”? “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” Who is He talking about, my friends, if not of us? And not just of us but of those, too, who will follow us. For shortly afterwards, when He had disappeared from mortal sight, so as to strengthen faith in the heart, all those who became believers, believed without seeing and their faith had great merit. To acquire it they reached out to Him, not a hand with which to touch Him but only a loving heart.” – St Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo, Father and Doctor of Grace (Sermon 88).
PRAYER – Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord God, unto all Thy servants that they may remain continually in the enjoyment of soundness, both of mind and body and, by the glorious intercession of the Blessed Mary, always a Virgin, may be delivered from present sadness and enter into the joy of Thine eternal gladness. Through Jesus Christ, Thy Son our Lord, Who lives and reigns with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen (Collect).
AnaStpaul 