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A period of turmoil! That’s what our life on earth is, a period of turmoil.\u00a0 The reading from Acts describes some of the turmoil of the birth of the Church.\u00a0 People are persecuted by the authorities; some reject the message of the Apostles; while doing his evangelical mission, people like Paul must continue to work at their trade, and that means Paul lives basically mouth-to-mouth in his mission of evangelization as he travels around the area.\u00a0 It is a chaotic time, the birth of the Church.\u00a0 Jesus Gospel message all but says that the Apostles should expect this; that they will feel like they have been abandoned- Jesus will be gone for an uncertain “little while”, they will be left on their own without the physical presence of Jesus to guide them day by day as they had become accustomed to, to give them constant inspiration and guidance.\u00a0 And yet, Jesus is telling them to hold up, stand tall, be firm, endure, because their weeping and mourning will turn to joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This message apples equally well to us today.\u00a0 In the course of our lives, our mission, we will miss the presence of our Lord and savior.\u00a0 It will seem like he is gone to us.\u00a0 True, we never saw and talked to and felt the physical presence of the Lord as the Apostles did.\u00a0 But we have the Scriptures that remind us of His life and presence among us, and the Resurrection and everlasting life, and the Spirit who will descend on us at Pentecost.\u00a0 Even more importantly, we have the Eucharist, which is His real presence whenever we want it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But still, there will be times when we will feel abandoned.\u00a0 Times when we are depressed over our sinfulness; or when we are faced with the difficulties and problems of life; or we lose a loved one or something very dear to us.\u00a0 In these times, we may feel abandoned.\u00a0 It is then that we need to recall these words of Jesus to his faithful:\u00a0 “But your grief will become joy”!\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 Thursday of the 6th Week of Easter Acts 18: 1-8; John 16: 16-20 Dc. Larry Brockman A period of turmoil! That’s what our life on earth is, a period of turmoil.\u00a0 The reading from Acts describes some of the turmoil of the birth of the Church.\u00a0 People are persecuted by the authorities; some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}