Friday in the Octave of Easter
Acts 4:1–12; Psalm 118; John 21:1–14
Two scenes.
A man walks. A net fills.
In both, something more is happening.
A crippled man stands.
Five thousand believe.
On the lake, the disciples fish all night.
Nothing.
Then a voice: “Cast the net.”
They obey.
The net fills.
Abundance.
And one of them says: “It is the Lord.”
In both moments, there is struggle.
Opposition. Fatigue. Uncertainty.
Peter and John stand before authorities.
The disciples stand in the dark of night.
And yet, in both moments,
Christ is present.
And his name— the name of Jesus— makes the difference.
“There is no other name by which we are saved.”
A strong claim. A simple claim.
One name.
Then Peter recalls the psalm:
“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”
A strange image.
Builders search for the right stone. They test. They reject.
Some stones seem unfit.
Set aside. Forgotten.
But God sees differently.
What is rejected becomes essential.
What is cast aside becomes the foundation.
Jesus is that stone.
Rejected. Crucified.
And yet, chosen.
Risen.
The cornerstone of a new community.
The Church.
A living structure.
Built slowly. Built through weakness. Built through witness.
At the beginning, no one could imagine it.
A crucified man. A small group of disciples.
Fearful. Hidden.
And then—
the tomb was empty. Christ is risen.
They were no longer afraid. They came out. They spoke.
Nothing could silence them.
Opposed, persecuted, pressed from every side—
and still, they grew.
Not by human strength. Not by strategy.
But because the Lord was at work.
“This is the Lord’s doing.”
And it still is.
In quiet ways. In hidden places. In ordinary lives.
Christ remains the cornerstone.
And we are built upon him.
So we return to something simple:
to trust the stone God has chosen.
to stand on what holds.
to believe that what seems small, rejected, or weak
may become, in God’s hands,
the beginning of something new.
Scripture Attribution
New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993
the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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