“Not only must the message be correctly delivered, but the messenger himself must be such as to recommend it to acceptance.” ~Joseph Barber Lightfoot
Today, we celebrate the feast of Saints Philip and James. They were two of the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus to become His messengers, His witnesses in the world. There is not a lot we know about St. James, son of Alphaeus, other than that he was one of the original twelve chosen by Jesus.
Philip was another of the twelve. What we know of him is that he was not entirely sure of who Jesus was or what He was about. Philip was the one to whom Jesus posed the question concerning purchasing enough bread for the multitude to eat. We know that Jesus asked this to test Philip.
While we do not know much about the apostles — and we shouldn’t, actually, because the Gospels are not about them, they are about Jesus — we do know that they were just like you and me: mortal, frail, slow to understand, easy to confuse, and forever questioning. Yet, once they came to their own conclusion that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, they were exceedingly faithful, even to the point of death.
That should give us hope because we, too, are mortal, frail, slow to understand, easy to confuse, and forever questioning. We have heard stories about the Lord throughout our lives and He is inviting each and every one of us to come to a deeper awareness of Him.
The only way that we can do that is to trust Him rather than ourselves. If we do that, He will be with us and will ask us to be His messengers in the world today.
FAITH ACTION: Spend some quality time with the Lord today in prayer so that you may be ready to be an appropriate messenger of His Word.