4TH SUNDAY OF EASTER B
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DIVINE HUMOR
Life can be ironic. A young
man applied to an exclusive boys’ high school but was turned down for health
reasons. Devastated, the young man enrolled in a public school where he
nevertheless excelled in everything he did. Later, the boy, once grown up as an
accomplished professional educator, became the director of the school that
refused him many years before.
St. Peter describes the Lord Jesus
using the imagery of a stone, to be exact, a cornerstone. This image is taken
from the biblical Book of Psalms that speaks of “the stone rejected by the builders
but has turned out to be the cornerstone.” In the ancient times, masons before
constructing grand edifices, checked the quality of stones to be used. The most
important stone was the cornerstone or capstone - the first stone to be laid at
the construction site and also the last stone to complete any building. Finding
the perfect cornerstone, the workers rejoiced.
Peter was illustrating the divine
irony in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. The elders and religious leaders
did not find in Jesus anything but nuisance, danger, and threat to their
traditions and positions. In eliminating Jesus, they rejected what they did not
know to be the capstone of salvation in the divine plan of God for the
salvation of Israel and the whole world. Through the Resurrection, God declared
himself the Father of Jesus and confirmed his chosen vessel for the reconciliation
all humanity with himself and with one another. How great was the people’s
mistake!
Do people still reject the Lord Jesus
today? In the more secularized parts of our planet, many people turn back on
their Christian faith and embrace a life of unbelief. A man started a movement
for “unbaptism” – petitioning his church to remove his name from the baptismal
records. Young people come home from college or the workplace declaring to
their parents that they no longer practice the religion their parents reared
them in.
Even Christians reject the Lord,
albeit in indirect and even unconscious ways. We go to church and obey the
religious tenets, but we are unfair or unjust to others. Some preach the Bible
not for service but for profit or gain. We hold conferences on spreading the
Gospel to all people but neglect acts of charity and mercy to our subordinates
or workers. We go crazy welcoming and venerating the relics of saints but
forget to assist the suffering poor around us.
Let us be honest in confronting
ourselves with this Easter challenge. In what ways do we reject the Lord in our
lives? What area of our life is closed or unaffected or insensitive to his
presence, his message and his demands? Is Jesus inviting us to accept and declare him as Lord not through words but through simple but sincere actions?
