Throughout Easter Season, we have several appearances of the resurrected Christ presented in the Sunday and daily gospel readings.
In these Resurrection appearances, Jesus reveals Himself to one or more disciples and instructs them to tell others that He has risen. He encourages them to believe that it is he, risen from the dead. Jesus offers them the peace that the world cannot provide. He greets those who abandoned or denied him with love and forgiveness and empowered the people with hope, consolation, and finally, the power of his Spirit.
We see these events occur in the account of Jesus meeting Mary Magdalene in the garden. Again, on several occasions, Jesus appears in the upper room, meeting the fear-filled group of disciples, once when Thomas is absent, and again the well-known account of Jesus inviting Thomas to put his hands in his wounds and encouraging him to believe. There is the story of Jesus meeting two downcast, depressed men on the road to Emmaus. There's the appearance of the Resurrected Christ, standing on the shore, watching the disciples in their boat after a fruitless night of fishing. Jesus tells them to try one more time, and after reluctantly following his instructions, they get a boatload of fish.
Through these appearances, the Lord cares for this group of disciples, broken apart and scattered by His crucifixion and death. He is reweaving them together around the truth of His Resurrection. Jesus is bringing to those who are downcast, hopeless, and desolate the Good News and transforming their hearts into centers of joy, hope, faith, and love.
Jesus is building up the Church and preparing these disciples for the challenging task of proclaiming the Good News that God is among his people in the Risen Christ. He reveals through His Resurrection there are no barriers to the joy of God's kingdom and that we have been claimed again by God as his own forever. This truth takes a small band of fearful men and women and miraculously transforms them into a force that has changed the lives of millions and millions of people in the light of the Risen Christ.
I cannot help thinking that the experience of these early disciples is, in some small way, reflected in our own experience after months of quarantining and living with anxiety and fear of Covid. With this thought, the resurrected Christ spent his time repairing that which was broken apart and scattered by his crucifixion and death; perhaps this is the mission we have, as the Church, as we begin to live in a post-covid church.
All of us have wondered if people will return to our pews, if the number of our members, already diminished before Covid, will be even more diminished. We wonder if we'll have the energy and life within our community to pick up where we left off, or will we face other struggles and challenges to maintain what we had or have currently?
Perhaps the example of Jesus responding to his broken community as the Resurrected One can provide some hope and direction for us. The Resurrected Jesus persists in his desire to build the community of disciples he prayed for before his passion in John's Gospel. We will hear this prayer on the final two Sundays of the Easter season. You're familiar with it:
"Jesus said to his disciples: "As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love. "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you." (Jn 15: 9-12)
And on the feast of the Ascension: "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. (Mk 16: 15-16a)
We have my friends between Easter and Pentecost, the last will and testament of Christ in these weeks. He leaves us his word that he will remain with us and in us. He promises that in our union with him, we are one with the Father.
Christ leaves us the mission to live the hope, joy, and faith of those men and women who left that upper room and dared to speak something essential and life-giving to non-believers, to those who scoffed and persecuted, but also, to those who believed without seeing. Finally, Christ left us his own Spirit to guide and inspire us in this mission.
Perhaps as we wonder what this Church will look like in our post-covid world, we should take our cue from the Risen Christ and be the word to others of hope, faith, love, and forgiveness.
Perhaps we should listen carefully to God's word proclaimed each Sunday and pray that we may all be inspired and courageously respond to the command of Jesus to "go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature."
The first disciples did this; we can do it too. We can build the kingdom of God with the Easter faith we continue to celebrate every time we come together to hear the gospel and share in the gift of the Eucharist – the presence of Christ in and among us.
Let us be of good faith and build God's kingdom together.
Fr. Jack Loughran, OSFS
Provincial
Toledo-Detroit Province
