3rd Sunday of Easter: 2024 Year B

Luke 24:35-48 "Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?”

The path of holiness is often a rough one, many times lacking signs to reassure us of our direction, but God is with us in our journey, helping us every step of the way. He will work miracles on our behalf if necessary, but He often chooses instead to use other people — all the better to test our faith in Him. Fr Joseph Esper.

After John the Baptist is arrested by King Herod and imprisoned, he sends the disciples to ask Jesus if he is the Messiah. He too had questions and struggled to understand his circumstances. “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

When St. Catherine of Siena was going through a long period of spiritual dryness and temptation, she cried out, “Where have You been, Lord? I have been having terrible thoughts and feelings.” She heard God answer her, “Catherine, I have been in your heart all this time. It was I who was giving you courage and strength to keep going each day!”

St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, who died in 1968, described his spiritual sufferings in a letter to a fellow priest: “Blasphemies cross my mind incessantly, and even more so false ideas, ideas of infidelity and unbelief. I feel my soul transfixed at every instant of my life; it kills me. . . . My faith is upheld only by a constant effort of my will against every kind of human persuasion. My faith is only the fruit of the continual effort that I exact of myself. And all of this, Father, is not something that happens a few times a day, but it is continuous. . . .”

Faith isn’t just a feeling we have; it’s a decision we make. When we choose to believe in God, He will give us the means not only to persevere in our faith, but ultimately to make it deeper and stronger. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "by faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God" (CCC, no. 143).

“The First Commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning against the Faith: Voluntary doubt about the Faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the Faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated, doubt can lead to spiritual blindness.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 2088

There are two parts to faith: The action of God and the action of man.

Faith is a grace: When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come "from flesh and blood", but from "my Father who is in heaven". Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by Him. "Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and 'makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.'"

Faith is a human act: Believing is possible only by grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. But it is no less true that believing is an authentically human act. Trusting in God and cleaving to the truths he has revealed is contrary neither to human freedom nor to human reason. In faith, the human intellect and will co-operate with divine grace: "Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace."

We read in today’s Gospel that the disciples were having trouble believing and so what does Jesus do? Magic them the faith? Do some Disney Song and dance - “I can show you the world”? No. He shows them the marks of His Passion. The Marks of our redemption. The Marks of His battle for our souls, His victory of death and sin. As we see in the first reading today, when the disciples went out they began by preaching the death and resurrection of Christ.

“If you lose money you lose much, lose a friend you lose more, If you lose Faith you have lost everything”

If you are having difficulty with your faith. pray the prayer we hear one man pray in the Gospel of Mark 9:24; “I do believe; help my unbelief!” Prayer requires a bit of faith, and when we begin to pray what do we do? We sign ourselves with the Cross. We bless ourselves with the sign of the Cross.