1st Week of Easter - Saturday B

Have you ever told someone or a group of people the absolute truth about something spectacular and they didn’t believe you, and, not only did they not believe you, but perhaps they mocked you, or retaliated in a negative way? 

Our Blessed Mother, whom we also look to in a special way on Saturdays, is no stranger to sharing incredible truth which ultimately would see her suffer. We know that even the good and just Saint Joseph was thrown for a loop when she told him she was pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit. It took an angel from God in a dream to convince him. And notice what Saint Joseph did not do. He did not wake up from that dream, and irrationally dismiss it: “Okay, it was only a dream… let’s figure out how to get my wife out of the mess she’s in now otherwise she’s gonna be stoned to death!” No, he knew his dream was supernatural and it was true!

In both the first reading and the gospel today, we see this common phenomenon taking place—the phenomenon of unbelief, which could also be described as an unreasonable lack of faith. Unlike Saint Joseph, and Our Blessed Mother herself who submitted to the incredible news of the Archangel Gabriel, the figures in today’s readings see something they explicitly state is real, yet instead of believing it, they begin to punish the messengers. Peter and John, after healing the paralytic are questioned by the rulers and elders who then dismiss them from the court of the Sanhedrin. Listen to how they begin to confer with one another: “It is obvious to everybody in Jerusalem that a miracle has been worked through them in public, and we cannot deny it. But to stop the whole thing spreading any further among the people, let us caution them never to speak to anyone in this name again.” Brothers and sisters, is this not a mystery? They’re saying that they cannot deny a miracle has taken place, and yet, instead of accepting Jesus as the true messiah, they choose to warn the apostles not to speak in his name ever again. This is why we’re calling this a phenomenon. The Britannica Dictionary defines the word phenomenon in this way: “something (such as an interesting fact or event) that can be observed and studied and that typically is unusual or difficult to understand or explain fully.”

Yet these same two apostles were not always a shining example of trusting faith. They too had to make their own spiritual journey, for in today’s gospel, what do we see happening? You have these two apostles, Peter and John, with the other nine now locked inside the Upper Room and Saint Mary Magdalene goes to them with the message of truth: “Jesus is indeed risen from the dead,” and they do not believe her. The two disciples we heard about yesterday who were on their way to Emmaus, rush back to Jerusalem to also tell the eleven they had seen Jesus alive, risen, and gloriously well, and again, they do not believe them. This then is the phenomenon: we observe their unbelief but can’t for the life of us explain it. These are men who encountered more than their fair share of miracles. Saint John tells us planet earth could not hold all the books that would have to be written if all the miracles had to be fully described in writing. And yet, we can hear them say with Thomas, “I refuse to believe.”