22 April 2026 -- Wednesday of the 3rd week of Easter
H O M I L Y
In this brief section of the great discourse on the Bread of Life, Jesus affirms two things: The first is that He Himself is the bread of life, and that whoever comes to Him in faith — whoever believes in Him — will never hunger or thirst again. Jesus satisfies all our hungers and thirsts, both spiritual and physical.
The second is that He came from heaven to do His Father’s will; and that His Father’s will is that He should lose none of those whom He has given Him. Our faith in Him is a pledge of resurrection on the last day and of eternal life.
The first reading shows us how God uses the trials of His Church to spread the preaching of the Gospel.
The initial preaching had obviously been confined to Jerusalem. The Apostles had not yet grasped the call to preach to all nations. After Stephen’s death and the first persecution, all those who had received the Apostles’ message scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Philip, one of the deacons appointed by the Apostles (for the ministry of the tables!), began to preach in a town in Samaria, and his words were accompanied by the same signs and wonders that had accompanied Jesus’ preaching. He cast out demons and healed the paralysed and the lame.
Just as was the case with the early Church, have we not often experienced in our personal lives, as well as in those of our communities, that times of suffering are also times of grace and growth, and that we learn more through suffering than through all our studies? Was it not through suffering that Christ learnt obedience, that supreme form of love?
Finally, this brief passage from the Acts of the Apostles introduces us once again to Saul of Tarsus, still a fierce persecutor of Christians in the name of the Law of Israel, and who would soon become the one who, more than any other in his life, would embody the extension of the Church to the Nations.
***Today we commemorate Blessed Gabriella
Armand Veilleux