We did not do it: Homily for Thursday, April 24, 2025

How easy it can be in ministry and in life to seek to take personal credit for the things that happen because of God. When the people look at Peter and John to give credit, they say: “We did not do it.” Readings for Today.

We did not do it

Peter and John are central figures in the acts of the apostles for this whole week. And they are doing amazing things. Well, more accurately, Jesus is doing amazing things through them.

How easy is it in the name of ministry to look at our own accomplishments and feel proud of what we have been able to do? Now, on some level, that’s okay. We do have gifts and talents given to us by God, and God should be glorified when we use those talents to build up the kingdom. Peter and John could have easily been tempted to say, “Look at what we’ve done. We’ve healed this cripple who’s now walking and jumping around.”

I think of my life as a Dominican where I’ve had so many wonderful experiences. Experiences I never could have imagined ever having had in my life. But it was really not so much because of me, but because of where it was that God had led me, and the needs of the ministries to which were entrusted to me.

We know that Peter and John are going to do great things. We know that they bear little resemblance to who they were before the resurrection and before Pentecost. They’re now those apostles who are seeing everything they do through the lens of needing to be able to proclaim the resurrection, to let people know who Jesus is, to speak of what they witnessed and what they’ve seen and what they’ve heard.

And how amazing is that? How amazing is it that God has been able to change them so dramatically, literally, to become who it is they were meant to be? Sometimes with the resurrection, I think we can, it’s so familiar to us, we can just take it for granted. And maybe not fully appreciate these gospel stories where they’re coming to grips with the idea that Jesus is really alive.

I don’t know about you, but if I loved someone and then they appeared to me, I might be a little skeptical. I might rub my eyes a little bit, maybe call a therapist and see if everything was okay.

So it’s easy to understand why in each of these encounters, it takes a while for it to sink in that Jesus is really alive again. We saw it with Mary in the garden. We saw it with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. We see it today, even as those two on the road to Emmaus are talking about their experience.

We can forget how significant is this event. I may be wrong, but I don’t think any other major religion makes the claim, one, that God became human, and two, that this human was killed and three, that he was raised from the dead.

But we live in a world that is so desperate to hear what arose from the resurrection, that the promises of God throughout the Old Testament are now completely fulfilled in the person of Jesus. And that’s really where the focus of Peter and John is too, because of this resurrection.

They are people who are announcing that there is a cure for sin. There is a cure for brokenness, that they can be healed. Let us ask the Lord to help us today to recognize the beauty and the power of the resurrection. And let us ask God for the grace that we might witness fully to what it can do in the lives of us and in the people. and in the people.

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update. And we have restarted our podcasts after a hiatus. You can subscribe to our podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

About Author