Date: April 30, 2020 ()

Bible Text: First Reading: ACTS 8:26-40; Gospel: JN 6:44-51 |

Series:

…there are things God does that’s even more important and it takes somebody to articulate it for us so that we may understand.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon back in the Philippines, my friends and I were ready for the basketball game in an open court. But suddenly it rained. The frustration was so deep that one could curse inside. Right beside us was a farmer and the father of one of our friends. He said: “Thank you, Lord, at last it rained. Our rice-fields are parched. Sooner, we can start planting rice.”

Sometimes, at a particular moment, I thought what I was about to do is the most important thing, but there are things God does that’s even more important and it takes somebody to articulate it for us so that we may understand.

In our first reading, Philip was led by an angel to meet the Ethiopian Eunuch who was reading the scriptures and was trying to understand what it all meant. His reading of the passage gave rise to a question for him that he was trying to find an answer to from Philip, ‘Tell me, is the prophet referring to himself or someone else?’ Philip gave him the crystal-clear explanation that made the Eunuch understand, believe, and ask for baptism.

In the gospel reading, Jesus says, ‘no one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me’. God the Father is always drawing us to his Son, as he drew the Ethiopian to Jesus through Philip.

Now, even though we know it is God who seeks for us first, we also need to know we also have our part - to be engaged in our own quest for God. The story of the Ethiopian shows that if we seek the Lord we will find him, because the Lord is always seeking us.

In these times of anxiety and fear due to the looming threat of the pandemic, when some have more time and space than they might usually have, it can be a good moment to enter more fully into our search for the Lord who is always seeking us. The Lord would have so many things to tell us but at times we didn’t have the luxury of time to listen. On these days of mandated and enforced cloister, let us spend time searching whatever we need to know more deeply about our faith, and believe that God will give us answers.