Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.
Peter and John faced the same enemies that put our Lord to death in the same context
as they gathered in court to hear a case, their case,
which was basically the same crime that our Lord committed.
They were his followers, and they were being ordered not to teach
in the name of Jesus any longer, and they asked the question
whether it was right in the sight of God for them to obey the Sanhedrin rather than God.
They were there to judge.
So Peter and James asked them to judge rightly in this case
because it was impossible for them not to speak about what they had seen
and what they had heard.
But it was not always the case for Peter and John,
especially Peter who had denied our Lord on the day that he died
when having just the night before having promised to go with him even unto death.
In fact, in today's gospel, we see a kind of brief summary of the week's events
prior to what we will hear tomorrow, which is the great doubter, Thomas.
Today we hear about Mary Magdalene and how she went to the tomb
and saw the angels and then went back to the tomb.
And then later, at the council, John Fitzgerald and the pre-trial council
talked about John Fitzgerald in a series of talk that should have always been
played on.
Jesus had a beautiful life.
And it was said,
Timothy's 서로 was a furious and firm and rebellious man
who had wandering on a great path.
When someone talked to Him at theなたthewis goodbyeph,
he said,
My son claims that the church here is amazing.
Read the passage –
Yi You also know?
Yup, we do.
We read this passage often in the people to those who areidis of this word.
Well, it may have been a little weird to tell the apostles,
and they didn't believe.
And then how our Lord appeared to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and they were dull and slow of heart
how our Lord appeared to the eleven at the table in the Cynical
and rebuked them, St. Mark tells us,
for their unbelief and hardness of heart
because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised.
And this is an interesting point.
You know, all of them became eyewitnesses of the resurrection.
Even if they hadn't seen our Lord until he appeared to them,
some of them probably hadn't seen our Lord until he appeared to the eleven of them in the Cynical,
they still saw him.
But it wasn't that, it wasn't, our Lord rebuked him even then
because they hadn't believed Mary Magdalene and the others.
They hadn't believed the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
Our Lord holds all of us accountable for putting our faith in the truth.
Each one of us has been given the grace.
Our Lord gave them the grace to believe when Mary Magdalene came back into that room
and told them that Jesus had been raised.
They had the grace to believe even though they hadn't seen it personally.
Peter didn't believe.
John didn't believe until he...
actually looked into the empty tomb.
And many others were slower to believe than that.
And as again, we will see the iconic doubter tomorrow
in the gospel of Thomas' transformation.
But he rebuked them because they were unbelieving and hard of heart.
It wasn't any excuse.
And so there was a tremendous transformation from that point of unbelief
to the profession of faith of Peter and John before the Sanhedrin
when they said it is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen
and what we have heard.
If we have received the faith and have embraced it,
if we have truly been given the gift of faith, which we have,
then that gift urges us on,
to profess our faith in the public and before men
because it is too important of a truth to go unsaid.
Our Lord says, let your light shine before men.
Do not hide it under a bushel basket.
We are called to recognize the power of our Lord's resurrection
and the power that we have in him.
It belongs to the grace of God that is for each and every one of us.
The power of our Lord's resurrection is made available to us in the sacraments,
especially in baptism in the Eucharist.
And it's this that we must preach to the whole world.
At the end of today's gospel, our Lord says to them,
after they have seen him and he has cured them of their unbelief and hardness of heart,
he says to them, go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.
Proclaim the good news to every creature.
In the face of a world lost in vice and secularism
that has rejected the most fundamental truths,
not only of supernatural faith, but also of nature,
where the very natural law that God has written into our hearts is under attack every day.
The world is in sore need of good news.
It's in sore need of the truth of the resurrection
and of the central fact that is attached to that truth,
which is that there is no salvation without Christ.
The world is lost without Jesus Christ.
There is no salvation and there is no hope.
Our hope, on the other hand, is Christ.
And when we stand up to proclaim his word or give witness to his truth,
by the way we live,
we are being invested with the power of God.
You know, the disciples were not, generally speaking, educated men.
And our Lord didn't always come to those who were most qualified.
We look for qualifications when it comes to putting people in charge of things.
But each one of us, through our baptism, is qualified to be one of Christ's.
Witnesses.
And when we are faithful, in spite of the fact that we face opposition,
even if we are the underdog or outnumbered or placed in very difficult circumstances,
our fidelity to the Lord is ultimately a means of grace for others.
The saints are willing to stand up in the procession.
The saints are willing to stand up in the public square and do what is right,
even if they were laughed at.
St. Maximilian desired to be a fool for Our Lady.
But it was a fool in the sense of what St. Paul says in the letter to the Corinthians,
that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men.
And the foolishness of God is the cross.
And it's wiser than the wisdom of men because God did not stay dead,
but he rose from the cross.
And his death and resurrection,
has been the means of our having received supernatural life
and ultimately, if we are faithful, eternal life.
And so we cannot but speak about what we have seen and what we have heard.
We too are witnesses of the resurrection every time we come to the Holy Sacrifice
and every time we overcome all cowardness and selfishness
and profess the truth about God.
And so we cannot but speak about Christ before men,
that they might know the good news of our Lord's resurrection.