May 9, 2025 // Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Acts 9:1-20
Reflect on the Word //
Kicking up a riot of colorful leaves with each step, my family and I would make our way through the canopied woods, stopping at each station to pray: “For the sake of His Sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” We’d genuflect and then rise to make our way to the next stop, the youngest in the group eagerly scurrying ahead. Others, pensive, would follow prayerfully behind.
As a child, I often visited the beautiful National Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians in Hubertus, Wisconsin (affectionately known as “Holy Hill”) to pray the Stations of the Cross, nestled on a forest trail below the Basilica. This was more than a family tradition, of course. It was—and still is—a reminder and re-presentation of the Way of the Cross, the path Jesus climbed as He neared the place of his execution. It is the way, the path of the Christian life.
In today’s reading from Acts, Paul is on his way to Damascus to imprison and persecute men and women who belonged to “the Way.” In the early Church, Christianity was called the Way, because it was a way of being in the world as a follower of Jesus Christ. It meant being different. Followers of Jesus stood out. They drew countless people to themselves, and to God, but they also made many people uncomfortable. Including Paul.
Today we read about Paul’s life-changing intervention with the Way Himself—“I am the Way”( John 14:6)—which shatters Paul’s misconceptions and opens his eyes to not only the Way, but the Truth and the Life. In this moment, Paul becomes different and one of the greatest followers of the Way in the history of the Church he once persecuted.
This begs the question with me, within us: Are we living the Way in such a way that others would recognize us as followers of Jesus? Are we walking a path of martyrdom each day, stopping to reverence and to imitate each sign of God’s immense, self-sacrificial love? The Way of Christianity is the Way of the Cross. Are we on that path?
Relate to the Lord // Which of the stations from the Station of the Cross will you identify with today and unite your sufferings to those of Jesus?
Claire Dwyer writes with the desire that all women see the sacredness of their stories in light of Salvation History. Speaker, Retreat Leader, Author of This Present Paradise, senior copywriter and content editor for Avila Foundation / Spiritualdirection.com, and co-founder of the PraiseWriters community, she knows firsthand the power of words to set a fire on the earth. She lives in Phoenix with her family. Find out more about her here.
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