On Flying Your Kite

On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again,
“Peace be with you. as the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
                                   The Gospel According to John 20:19-23

Happy Divine Mercy Sunday!

In last week’s empty tomb scene from John, Peter is standing frightened and confused in an empty tomb. In this week’s first reading from Acts, people are putting their sick out by the streets so that Peter’s shadow might fall on them and heal them. What??? How did that happen?

The reading from John begins to fill in the gap. It’s the “evening of the first day of the week,” which was Sunday evening, presumably the evening of the day when the tomb was found empty. The disciples are together, fearful of the same temple authorities who had arrested Jesus. Then the dead man comes walking. Just appears in a locked room. Greets them with “Peace be with you.” Shows them the wounds in his hands and side. And breathes upon them the Holy Spirit and its power to forgive.

In Deacon Greg’s Easter homily, he told a wonderful childhood tale about winning a kite-flying contest with a new-fangled design of his father’s. He had his string – two rolls of it – on a wheel. The breeze took his kite higher and higher, far above the other kites but then the string flew off because he had forgotten to tie it to the spool! The wind carried it for a short time, but without being moored to the ground, it soon crashed.

And this, our good Deacon said, is like faith. We can be carried away by the breath of the Holy Spirit, but that Spirit only manifests itself when it is in tension with earthly life, with our struggles on the ground. It is our faith that allows our kites to be carried away by the Spirit. But you need to enter the contest. If you don’t fly your kite, you never get off the ground. You have no connection with the Spirit. You are stuck.

So develop your faith! The Cursillo movement has a framework of prayer, study and action. Come to Mass, the great prayer of the Church, take a few minutes each day to read a little of your Bible, be quiet and let God’s still small voice speak, and find a ministry that stirs your soul.