Daily Devotional

The secret to practising what these early believers did is refusing to be possessed by what you own. Becoming rich is not a sin, but being possessed by one’s wealth is a sin. Once upon a time, a rich young man asked Jesus about the secret of inheriting eternal life. Out of love for him, Jesus told him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor, after which he could return to follow Jesus. The young man walked away sorrowfully. The believers in today’s first reading did exactly what Jesus asked the young man to do. They did this because their possessions did not possess them.

Anytime we reflect on the earliest Christian communities, as we have them in the Acts of the Apostles, we cannot help but feel sad at the situation in our churches today. The principle at work back then was: “When one member suffers, all suffer with him or her.” Does this principle still operate in our churches today? Do we still gather to pray for ourselves? Or have we become too busy to pray? Do we still have faith in the power of prayer?

When you go for confession, and a priest says, “Your Sins are forgiven,” know that you are enjoying the Divine Mercy of God because the priest has received the Holy Spirit at ordination and has been empowered by Jesus to forgive sins. In the sacrament of penance, you are not confessing to a man; you are confessing to someone reborn through the breath of Jesus, as we read in today’s Gospel passage.