It is difficult to appreciate or understand anything without experiencing it. Even with a good explanation, it is almost impossible to really understand something we have never experienced. And even after experiencing it, we may never fully understand it. Some things, like God or the beauty of a flower or love or any one of us, are just beyond our understanding.

In the first reading today, Paul was preaching to the people of Athens, an intellectual center of the Roman Empire. Paul tries to convince them with philosophical arguments that Christianity is the religion they had been practising all along without knowing it. But he was largely unsuccessful. Christianity is not a religion which can be explained too easily. It is full of paradoxes: a person who was fully divine yet fully human; a man who rose from the dead; a child born of a virgin; there is so much which just does not make sense and which is beyond our worldly logic.

Christianity is a religion which must be experienced to be believed and accepted. The best preaching we can do is by living the Christianity we believe. If we do not live the words we proclaim can save us, how could anyone believe? If we do not as a community experience the risen Lord in our midst, how can we share the experience with others; how can they possibly believe? With God's grace may we give convincing testimony by our lives so others may come to know and love Jesus.