Homily: April 10, 2024, Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter (Go take your place)

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"But during the night, the angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison, led them out, and said, “Go and take your place in the temple area, and tell the people everything about this life.”

I love this scene from the Acts of the Apostles. You can almost feel the excitement and experience a jaw-drop reaction when you visualize the prison doors suddenly open wide and a bright light leading them all out of prison. Free again! To continue preaching and spreading the Good News with greater fervor and conviction!

It was not yet time for the apostles to stay in prison, they still had more work to do, so God sent His angels to set them back to the temple area, to reinstate them from being prisoners back to being preachers. 

This is not a legend, not someone’s imagination, but it truly did happen. The truth is, such divine intervention is still happening in our time.

Have you heard about the story of the beggar priest?

I will share the gist  of it here. There was a priest who did something very wrong, he left the priesthood, and finally ended up being a beggar on the church steps of Rome. 

One day, our late Pope John Paul II found out about this, and he invited the beggar to have dinner with him. At the end of dinner, the pope asked the beggar to hear to his confession, to which the beggar declined declaring that he was no longer a priest but a beggar.

Our Holy Father replied, ‘My son, once a priest always a priest, and who among us is not a beggar. I too come before the Lord as a beggar asking for forgiveness of my sins.’

With that, and with the Pope hearing his confession after that, our Holy Father reinstated all his priestly faculties and gave him a special mission to minister to the homeless and the beggars from then on.

This is another true story which shows us how God intervenes, through our Pope, to reinstate His chosen ones back into accomplishing His mission.

For the full version of the story, please check out the link under my homily on our parish website.

During the papacy of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger once submitted his resignation from office, intending to go back to Germany, but our Holy Father did not accept it, and as we all know, the Cardinal later became Pope Benedict XVI, succeeding Pope JPII.

God has a mission plan for each of us. Even if we have strayed from that mission, God will intervene to bring us back, in His time. Let us be open and ready when that day comes. It could be a unexpected dinner invitation, or it might be a dramatic raising of the prison bars to set us free again to continue God’s work, “Go and take your place”

Thy will be done, O Lord. Amen!

https://vocationblog.com/2013/11/joh-paul-ii-and-the-beggar-priest/


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