Bright Wednesday
Acts 2:22-36; John 1:35-51
No fasting or abstention from foods.
Read Acts 2:22-36
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
In today’s reading from Acts, we hear the second half of Peter’s powerful sermon to the people of Jerusalem after the coming of the Holy Spirit on the assembled apostles in the Day of Pentecost.
At the parish where I grew up in, there was a tradition for the first verse of “King of the Heavens” to be sung after the Gospel and before the Homily. This was the faithful praying for the Holy Spirit to come down upon the homilist so that they would be spiritually fed by the words of the homily. In seminary, a brother seminarian remarked that he personally prays to the Holy Spirit before every homily he listens to that he might be fed by the words of the homilist despite any preconceived notions or past experiences he may have in listening to a homily by a particular homilist.
All of us desire to be spiritually fed by the Word of God and by the further opening of that Word in the subsequent homily. Make it a point, brothers and sisters, to always pray for the homilist as he prepares to preach, that the Holy Spirit enlighten the homilist with the message of the Gospel to share with all the faithful.