We find ourselves in the octave of Easter, during which we spend some days reflecting in wonder on the reality, the beauty, the power and the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus for the first disciples and for us today.
The first disciples had a really hard time accepting the bodily reality of the risen Jesus. Behind those locked doors, and in the face of their doubts Jesus asked for something to eat and then ate the piece of baked fish before them. He did this to convince them that, yes, he was flesh and bone, real and alive, and not some ghost or figment of their imagination. The absent and doubting Thomas was the hardest one to convince. Jesus made him place his hands in the wounds of his hands and feet and in his pierced side to prove that the Jesus who was crucified, died and was buried on Good Friday was indeed risen, real and standing before him on Easter Sunday.
Obviously, all this turned the world upside down for those first disciples. The hard and cold reality of death had been robbed of its dreaded finality, and a sinful world had now been offered the promise of forgiveness, newness, grace and eternal life!
Those first disciples were indeed a privileged lot. They saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes, and they spent many days with him, eating and talking, learning and reflecting, before the day of his glorious Ascension. They became the official “witnesses” to the truth, the reality, of the resurrection. Their testimony through preaching, gospel and martyrdom became, for us, the path to faith, their faith, in the reality, the beauty, the power and the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus.
We believe in their witness to the resurrection, but we also know that our faith needs to travel from head to heart to our everyday life with one another. How does that happen? Prayerfully and quietly read the accounts of the appearances of the risen Jesus to his first disciples. Place yourself there as one of those first witnesses. React as they did. Be changed as they were. Go from an encounter with the risen Jesus, as they did, into your everyday life with others and, like them, make a real difference in your everyday world.
Let how we live today proclaim that Jesus is indeed risen and that that fact of faith changes everything – everything!
V. Rev. Lewis S. Fiorelli, OSFS
Provincial
Wilmington-Philadelphia Province
