Thursday of the Third Week of Easter
April showers… I’m sure all know the saying. As spring begins to surface I always get anxious to get out into the garden and begin preparing and planting vegetables. Amidst this excitement, I always have to give myself a reality check and make sure that everything is timed correctly. Compost needs to be laid out early enough that it can settle and be completely broken down. Tomatoes can’t go in too early or they won’t survive the chilly nights. Planting needs to be spaced out so that veggies are come to harvest at different times. On top of all this, one of the biggest reality checks is waiting to fill the rain barrels so that in the drier summer months we have a good supply of rain water to nourish the plants. Fill the barrels too early and the pipes could freeze, start them too late and we’ll be playing catch up once planting does happen.
All this preparation seems analogous to Phillip’s encounter with the Ethiopian enuch in today’s first reading. Its one thing to lead someone to the waters of Baptism as a moment of conversion, but it can be even more helpful to walk with someone in their discovery of faith, providing instruction to prepare them for the cleansing and empowering experience of Baptism. Today’s first reading calls us to be Phillips for others by providing instruction when it is necessary within our faith. Perhaps it also calls us to embrace the enuch’s perspective of seeking instruction so we might embrace our faith more fully. This dynamic of instruction allows us to be Christ for others and also allows us to encounter Christ more fully in our daily lives.
The soon to be collected rainwater becomes the nourishment for our plants so that they may grow and prosper, providing nourishment for us as well. Today’s gospel reading calls us to embrace the nourishment that our Baptism provides and to be attentive to God’s hand in our lives so that we may grow in faith and come to know Christ more fully. In turn, we might walk with Christ and rejoice in the gift that our faith is and is to come. Without such instruction, the struggle to embrace Christ becomes greater and perpetuates the possibility of ignorance, which the spiritual works of mercy call us to counteract.
How might you provide faith-filled instruction to others? What type of instruction might you need to embrace Christ more fully in your faith life? How can these forms of instruction lead yourself and others deeper into the waters of Baptism this Easter season and in this year of mercy?
- Fr. Satish Joseph