11 May 2020: Homily on Acts (14:5-18) (see also Acts 3:1-26)

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I hope you have read both passages given above.  Peter and John went up to the temple to pray.  They saw a cripple.  Peter saw his faith and called him out as cured.  The man leaped up and went into the temple with Peter and John.

Paul and Barnabas were preaching the word of God in Lystra, which was in lower Galatia and probably where Paul sent the Letter to the Galatians.  They saw a man crippled from birth.  Paul called him out and cured him.  The crowds went wild as they had for Peter and John.  The religious authorities also got involved.

In Rwanda in 1982, there were several teenaged girls and one fifteen-year old boy who received visions of the Virgin Mary and of Jesus.  They are called their people to repent of their sins lest something terrible happen.  Segatashya, the boy, spoke of miracles in the hearts of those who repented.  Most of the people, however, did not give up the hardness of their hearts and twelve years later, a great genocide took place in Rwanda and one ethnic group viciously murdered about a million people from the other ethnic group.

The miracles of the crippled men certified the message of Peter and John and the message of Paul and Barnabas.  The miracles of conversion certified the message of the children from Rwanda.  What about our own day?

We all look for certification.  The people have a right to ask for certification for our ministry.  When crippled hearts are healed and broken hearts healed, we have the miracles that will certify our message as coming from the living God.  Our own hearts also need the miracle of conversion.  The word of God brought healing in Jerusalem and in Lystra and Derbe.  The word of God brought healing to those who accepted it in Rwanda.  The word of God waits at our door to heal us and those who hear us.  How do we accept this word of God?