Monday, April 21, 2014

Where is your 'Galilee?'

Then Jesus said to them: "Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me." ~~Matthew 28:10

Galilee. Where it all began. Where, as the homilist at Mass today said, Jesus' followers, His apostles, found Him irresistible.

In the life of every Christian, after baptism there is also a more existential 'Galilee': the experience of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ who called me to follow Him in His mission…What is my Galilee? Where is my Galilee? Do I remember it?…The Gospel of Easter is very clear: we need to go back there, to see Jesus risen, and to become witnesses of His resurrection. This is…not a kind of nostalgia. It is returning to our first love, in order to receive the fire which Jesus has kindled in the world and to bring that fire to all people, to the very ends of the earth. ~~ Pope Francis, Easter Vigil Homily
(A little woman. A little prayer. A huge impact on me!)

Edith Stein was at a cathedral in Frankfurt, Germany...

One day a woman, a Jew, and her friend went to look at the cathedral in Frankfurt. While they were standing there in reverent silence, a woman with her shopping basket came in knelt in a pew in the empty church to pray. This made a deep impression on the observer who later on wrote that she had seen people turn up in time for the service in Protestant churches and in the synagogue. But this unknown woman had come in the middle of the day's work to the empty cathedral as if to talk with a friend.

As the above quoted article says, (and you outta read the whole thing) Edith Stein is but one of many who have been grabbed by the "little prayers" of others. For she who became Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, perhaps this unknown woman who offered a "little prayer" -- for No Apparent Reason (save love) -- was her `Galilee.'

Don't negate your `little prayers.' They may seem like pebbles to you. But our Heavenly Father, in His Everlasting Love, can turn them into boulders far greater than even the one which sealed Jesus' tomb.

He can make them into a `Galilee'…a zillion times over and more.

May God continue to bless you. Alleluia!