8 May 2023
Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter
Photographers know the importance of keeping the lenses of their cameras clean. Likewise, who would want to read Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to the Critique of Pure Reason, with dirty glasses. In both cases a smudge can distort one’s vision. Ignatius offers wise spiritual advice to directors about not getting in the way of giving a retreat, noting that it is better for God to deal with the retreatant than having the retreat director get in the way. How often have I seen tour guides whose theatrics and emotions make their presentation the lens by which people were forced to view a work of art. In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles we hear how the Apostles Paul and Barnabas are struck with horror when people confuse their transmission of God’s saving work with the idea that they were gods themselves. The apostles healed but that work had its source in God not in their own abilities. Here we see how Paul and Barnabas were reiterating the teaching that good Christians are instruments in advancing the kingdom, not the king himself. Sometimes we all get confused on this one point.