{"id":952,"date":"2017-05-04T11:05:32","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T16:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=952"},"modified":"2017-05-04T11:05:32","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T16:05:32","slug":"let-god-be-your-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=952","title":{"rendered":"Let God Be Your Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday of Third Week of Easter<\/span><\/h3>\n

Acts 8:26-40; Jn 6: 44-51<\/span><\/h3>\n

Dc. Larry Brockman<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u201cThey shall all be taught by God\u201d.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>These are Jesus\u2019 words at the beginning of the Gospel- a quote from the prophets.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Now I am sure that most of us glossed over that when we heard it.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Of course we are all taught by God. Really?<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

One of the things we discover about those who teach us at a very early age, is that to learn, we have to listen, and believe what the teacher tells us without question.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Likely our first teachers were our parents.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And fortunately for most of us, we blindly accepted the words and instructions of our parents as toddlers.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We believed; we had faith.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And so we learned the basics- how to talk, how to walk, how to eat, how to love.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Then we went to school.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We believed that the pattern in the book is an \u201cA\u201d just because we were told so by the teacher.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We also believed that the sound of an \u201cA\u201d is \u201cah\u201d.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And so, we learned to read.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Indeed, we accepted a lot about what our first teachers told us without question.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

This is the sense of what it means deep down when Jesus quotes the prophets:<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cThey shall all be taught by God\u201d.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>God\u2019s word on everything is the absolute truth.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>If we want; we can be taught by God by believing on Faith what he tells us because we can absolutely trust God.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

But the fact is that as we grow up,<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>we learned that our other teachers could not be trusted absolutely.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>There were times that our parents, teachers, and other folks in authority either didn\u2019t know the truth, didn\u2019t tell the truth, or didn\u2019t understand the truth adequately.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Similarly, there were things that we discovered were ambiguous- the truth wasn\u2019t clear sometimes.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And so, we learned to \u201cthink for ourselves\u201d and to pick and choose to believe from what we heard.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, many folks have applied this rationale to the things that God wants us to learn about him.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We test everything God tells us sort of like we test the things we hear from other sources.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And when we test it, we use our rationale.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s as if we put our thought process ahead of the wisdom of God.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Real Faith is coming to believe in what God has told us simply because God has said so.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We cannot always reason it out; some of it is a mystery.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>That is why Jesus says we need to have faith like a little child.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Now the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunoch that we just heard is a great example of accepting on Faith what God has to say.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Here is a man who is totally foreign to the Jews.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>He has somehow been attracted to the Jewish Scriptures, and is seeking the truth.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Jesus talks about such a person in the Gospel.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cNo one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him\u201d.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>That is what happened to the Ethiopian- God was drawing him to the truth.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And Phillip opens his eyes to what it all means by relating the prophecy of Isaiah to all that happened to Jesus.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>What faith this Ethiopian man had- he truly had the Faith of a child.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>He accepted the word of God without challenging it.<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

This Gospel addresses some of the most important elements of our Faith.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We are all called to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, rose from the dead, and gave us the Eucharist as the bread of life.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>All of us are called to live a Christian life daily, and to be witnesses to the world.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We are called to live in the world- not to withdraw from it.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>But to live in this secular world with conflicting values and voices, we need all the help we can get.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Jesus promises us that He is bread of life in this Gospel.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>The Eucharist is that bread of life, and it is available to us as often as we seek it.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>When we really believe that Jesus is present to us in the Eucharist,<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>and relish those few moments after we receive Him, then we will be given all the strength we need, all the graces we need, to be Christian witnesses in the face of an ever increasing secular world; to bear our share of the hardships which life brings us; to love our neighbors as ourselves; and to forgive as God forgives us.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

And those who truly believe like this will live forever. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday of Third Week of Easter Acts 8:26-40; Jn 6: 44-51 Dc. Larry Brockman \u201cThey shall all be taught by God\u201d.\u00a0 These are Jesus\u2019 words at the beginning of the Gospel- a quote from the prophets.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now I am sure that most of us glossed over that when we heard it.\u00a0 Of course we are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[470,14,469],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952"}],"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=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":953,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions\/953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}