This is the certainty of the Christian faith. We will be sad, sometimes. We will be shaken, but our sadness turns into joy for the one who believes. Jesus seeks to comfort his disciples in today’s Gospel, Jesus says we need to leave, and this time is the time of passion, but after He returns, and his return is not limited to Easter, He is among us. This is our faith, our certainty, he is among us. During his life on Earth his presence was visible, people came to him, after the Lord’s Easter and Ascension, it becomes a spiritual presence, deeper and more universal. Now, it’s not just a few people who can touch and see Jesus, after the Easter of our Lord, his presence becomes deeper, we have the opportunity to experience Christ. And this presence is recognized as? As we touched on this presence? In this funny? This presence is recognized in faith. We are called to trust God even in moments of doubt, of darkness, this is where we need more confidence.

We need to dive into our heart in faith in God

You probably already experienced a silence waiting for God: “God didn’t hear my prayer, he didn’t answer me, he didn’t answer my request,” but this is where we’ve been called to dive into our heart into confidence in God. And, truly, do we believe that God is in the midst of us? We need to be faithful, in this moment of the silence of God, we need to be more firm, now is not the time to lose heart, and stop going to Church. We must persist and be faithful, because it’s in fire that gold and silver are proven, but we forgot those words.

We need to live in simplicity and put evangelism as priority

The gifts that we have are not ours, we received them from God, what you do in Ministry in the Church that is not his. It was God who gave it to you. St. Paul received his Ministry, as we see in Acts of the Apostles 18:1 -8 , He announced this Savior, and he lived in this complete surrender and wasn’t acting out of self-interest, do not act like the Levites who were more concerned with money than with the evangelization with taking the word and bring Christ to people. We can’t fall into the temptation to want to promote with the gifts of God, we need to put the evangelization as a priority, because the gifts are not ours, they are of God. We can’t pander the gifts that God gave us, we cannot charge you when we carry out evangelization, we cannot charge more than what is necessary for a preaching, for a show. St Paul himself teaches us, today, a way of the cross, not self-promotion. Pope Francis also has guided us in this direction, we look more for the poor. We need to get back to the essence, Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, the meaning of our delivery. We need to live in simplicity.

The Holy Spirit leads us to freedom and simplicity

The Christ in our lives goes off and without the Holy Spirit of God we are nothing without the presence of the spirit are empty people, “full of themselves” and that they will live according to them, we became slaves of the world, why many times we don’t let the Christ is the Center of our walk.

The Holy Spirit leads us to freedom and simplicity. Truly, are we people of the spirit? Do we allow ourselves to be open to that grace so that we can resist the temptations the world offers us? We need to seek this freely, we need to ask the Holy Spirit for the day for the Lord to help us get back to our essence and we can be men and women embedded in the Word. We can then let the word touch the depths of our being so that even if we pass through disease and difficulties, we can cry out to the Holy Spirit that he can restore us and give us the desire for holiness.

Lord, grant us the grace of the sense of Holiness that the Holy Spirit can help us every step of the way committed to evangelization!

Original Portuguese Transcription and adaptation: Priscilla Santos

Fr. João Marcos Polak

Portuguese Version