Listen Like You Never Listened Before

The one thing that I like about how the Jewish religion is supposed to work is simply that the things they celebrate are not happening to people that lived long ago but rather they are happening to them, today.  In other words, the Passover is happening to them in real-time, not to people that they did not know in the distant past.  For them, the love of God as told in the ancient stories is happening to them as if it were the first time. My narrative is coming before the reading this morning because that is how I want you to take this reading as if you are there and while Peter is speaking to a whole crowd of people, he actually has locked eyes with you and it seems as if his whole speech is directed at you. 

Peter said to the people:
"The God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,
the God of our fathers has glorified his servant Jesus,
whom you handed over and denied in Pilate's presence
when he had decided to release him.
You denied the Holy and Righteous One
and asked that a murderer be released to you.
The author of life you put to death,
but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses.
Now I know, brothers,
that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did;
but God has thus brought to fulfillment
what he had announced beforehand
through the mouth of all the prophets,
that his Christ would suffer.
Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away."


Doesn't it make a difference when you read it as if the message was meant personally for you? 


Remember the Poor Souls in Purgatory.  As much as we like to think that our deceased relatives and friends went directly to heaven, the thought is for our comfort only.  Many of us will have to stopover in Purgatory and cleanse ourselves from the attachment to sin that we carry with us.  Millions of souls need our prayers.