I, John, your brother who share with you the distress, the kingdom and the endurance we have in Jesus…..

​​​​​​​Revelation 1:1a

What you are reading was composed on the Monday after an exhausting but magnificent Easter.  Easter, and the three days that precede it are the most intense time of year for church workers.  My world narrowed to little more than home, St. Mary’s, and the drive between the two.

On Monday morning I opened my iPad and searched for the Second Sunday of Easter/Divine Mercy. The gospel was familiar. We hear it every year at this time. Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room. The first visit is sans Thomas. In the second the Risen Jesus invites Thomas to see, touch and believe.

As I read the other readings, notifications from my e-mail and newsfeed pop-up on and disappear from the screen. The narrow world in which I have resided expands rapidly. 

I see details of yet another senseless act of violence.  Having recently spent several weeks on the lovely, peaceful island of Sri Lanka the bombings hit much closer to home.

John’s words of greeting at the top of this page invite me to think……pray….. and type.

John composed these words and those that follow from a prison cell high atop a mountain on the Greek Island of Patmos.  

The USCB website writes Revelation was composed as resistance literature to meet a crisis. The book itself suggests that the crisis was ruthless persecution of the early church by the Roman authorities.  

No wonder Revelation is still relevant.  

A little later the website continues:  

The triumph of God in the world of men and women remains a mystery, to be accepted in faith and longed for in hope. It is a triumph that unfolded in the history of Jesus of Nazareth and continues to unfold in the history of the individual Christian who follows the way of the cross, even, if necessary, to a martyr’s death.

Let us pray God’s Divine mercy upon all victims of senseless violence and religious intolerance,

Bruce