Gospel: Mk 16:5-18
Then he told them, “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; the one who refuses to believe will be condemned. Signs like these will accompany those who have believed: in my name they will cast out demons and speak new languages; they will pick up snakes, and if they drink anything poisonous, they will be unharmed; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will be healed.”
Reflections
THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
The Road to Damascus has become synonymous to the experience of conversion. This is taken from the dramatic conversion of Saul, the persecutor of Christians, to Paul, the apostle of Christ. Even in our days there are examples of such dramatic conversions. I watched in YouTube the story of a Moslem woman who was teaching in a university. She had a colleague who is a zealous Christian and she used to be intrigued by this woman’s faith. She can however not believe when this woman keeps on saying at certain situations: “With God, nothing is impossible”. They were not actually friends. Years after they parted ways, the Moslem woman was diagnosed with a 4th degree breast cancer. She fell into deep depression and then remembered her Christian colleague. She looked for her present address and went to seek her out. When she found her she said she remembered that she always said with God nothing was impossible, so could she pray over her and ask God to cure her of her cancer. The Christian woman reluctantly did so. The Moslem woman then went home and when she went to the doctor for her next breast examination, the doctor said unbelievingly that there was no more trace of the cancer. The woman then had herself baptized and is now a lay preacher.
We thank God for such extra-ordinary show of grace but we thank God also for the less spectacular conversions that happen in our daily life — the cure of an addiction, the grace to forgive, the discovery of a vocation.
Daily Reflection 2018
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