April 15.   Saturday of Easter Week. The two brothers were having an argument. Percy shouted, “How often have I told you, shown you, nagged you and how often are you so thick you just don’t understand, or choose to understand.”  They hadn’t really started their faith sharing yet and of course Percy would not have talked to his younger brother like that if they had.  Aunt Norah was clever to use the opportunity to say that Jesus must also have felt frustrated and irritated at times with the “thickness” of the disciples.  “Do we really always try hard enough to listen and understand what we are being told and especially what we need to know,” she added.  Reflect, share and act, pray.

Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalen and then to two others but the Eleven did not believe.  Afterwards he appeared to the Eleven themselves as they sat at table and he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.  And he said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. Mark 16:9-15 Pope Francis. When a family is welcoming and reaches out to others, especially the poor and the neglected, it is a symbol, witness and participant in the Church’s motherhood. Social love is a reflection of the Trinity. The family lives its spirituality precisely by being at one and the same time a domestic church and a vital cell for transforming the world.   AL 324  The Holy Spirit always surprises us to suggest fresh paths and new ways of speaking. It is a slow and perhaps tiring exercise, this learning to listen to one another – bishops, priests, religious and laity, all the baptized – and to avoid artificial and shallow and pre-packaged responses.   Let us not soundproof our hearts, let us not remain barricaded in our certainties.  Homily of Pope Francis.