Believing In Jesus And Working For Him Is All That Matters

Acts. 5:27-33 & Jn. 3:31-36

To let everyone know in Jerusalem that Jesus had risen and that He offered them eternal life was the one intention on the minds of the apostles after Pentecost. This angered the religious authorities. They forbade them to preach about Jesus but Peter responded that it was better to obey God than men.

Those words of Peter still ring true today. If we follow the teachings of Christ the world has its subtle way of telling us we are wrong and that there is another easier way of living. This is an enlightened and modern world, we are informed, not an old fashioned one, in which abortion is a woman’s right, living together before marriage is acceptable and even fashionable because everyone is doing it, practice contraception to avoid adding to the world's overpopulation and why not please yourself about Sunday Mass and shopping on Sundays when you have had to work hard during the week? These are just a few of the many ways in which the world tells us how to live. Are we to follow the ways of the world? With God’s grace we can be faithful and loyal to Christ’s teachings. We must live by the words of Peter, “Better to obey God than men!” And we might influence other people by how we give witness to the truth in our everyday lives.

For many years I thought the words of today’s Gospel were those of Jesus, but no, they are the words of John the Baptist. How enlightened he was about the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity! Let’s listen once again to him and you would think it was Jesus speaking. “The Father loves the Son and has entrusted everything to Him. Anyone who believes in the Son has eternal life, but anyone who refuses to believe in the Son will never see life: the anger of God stay on him.” Could it be that John the Baptist taught this to John the apostle who was one of his disciples before he had become an apostle of Jesus? It makes me wonder how much contact he had with his cousin Jesus which was not recorded.

Dearest Father, thank You for allowing us to believe in Your Son, and so possess the means of having eternal life. Hear our prayers for those who do not accept Jesus, and incur Your anger, that they might recognise the truth.