Thursday of the Second Week of Easter
Acts 5:27–33; Psalm 34; John 3:31–36
They stand again before power.
Questioned. Pressed. Threatened.
They have already been warned. Already imprisoned.
And still— they return.
Same place. Same message.
And one line cuts through everything:
“We must obey God rather than men.”
No authority likes that sentence.
No system welcomes it.
Because it draws a line.
There is a limit to every human power.
But such words are not spoken lightly.
To say them is to accept the cost.
The apostles knew this.
They had seen Jesus.
Risen. Alive.
And once you have seen, silence becomes impossible.
The psalm says:
“Many are the troubles of the just.”
Not a few. Many.
Faith does not remove struggle.
It deepens it.
Paul will say the same:
“Through many trials we enter the kingdom.”
This is the road.
Not comfort. Not security.
But endurance.
Paul knows it well.
Prisons. Beatings. Near death.
He calls himself “the refuse of the world.”
And still— he continues.
Why?
Because witness cannot be contained.
“We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”
This is the heart of the Gospel.
Jesus himself does the same.
He speaks of what he has seen with the Father.
He reveals what no one else can see.
And then he sends others to do the same.
So the world that hears this witness stands before a choice.
To accept or to refuse.
The authorities refused.
Many still do.
Truth can be resisted.
Silenced. Ignored.
But not erased.
Jesus says it plainly:
“Whoever believes has life.”
And whoever refuses remains in darkness.
This is not a threat.
It is reality.
To reject the Son is to close the door to life.
To receive him is to pass from death to life.
This is why it mattered then.
And this is why it matters now.
For the apostles, this was not optional.
It was everything.
Life and death.
So they spoke.
And they did not stop.
The question now is ours:
Does it still matter?
Or has the urgency faded?
Have we heard so often that we no longer hear?
The world has many voices.
But few witnesses.
So we return to something simple:
to listen again.
to see again.
to believe again.
And then—
when the moment comes—
to speak.
Not to win. But to witness.
Because in the end,
the same line remains:
we must obey God rather than men.
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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