3rd. Sunday of Eastertide (B)
(Acts of the Apostles 3:13-15,
17-19; 1st. John 2:1-5; Luke
24:35-48)
My dear Brothers and Sisters in
Christ, once again we have a beautiful Eastertide apparition of the Risen Lord
Jesus to His disciples in which we in Mother Church are privileged to be able to
share thanks to her Holy Scriptures.
Jesus appeared to His Apostles in
Jerusalem as they were gathered together discussing the report of two disciples
who claimed to have encountered Jesus – risen from the dead -- as they had been
on their way to Emmaus. To prove that
they were not mistaken they told the Apostles how, as He walked with them along
the way, He had opened up the meaning of the Scriptures for them, and how they
had managed to persuade Him to stay with them and share their meal; a meal which
-- in a most wonderful manner -- became quite unmistakeably His meal being
shared with them! The Apostles gathered
there in secret in Jerusalem were amazed to hear what had thus transpired on the
way to Emmaus, and as they were considering together what it all might mean,
suddenly Jesus Himself was standing there in the room with them, and despite His
greeting:
Peace be with you,
they -- thinking were seeing a ghost
-- were startled, and indeed terrified to such an extent that Jesus went
straight on to say to them:
"Why are you
troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at My hands and My feet, that it is I
Myself. Touch Me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you
can see I have." And as He said this,
He showed them His hands and His feet.
Thereupon He opened their
understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures -- just as they had
heard of Him doing for those two disciples on the way to Emmaus -- and He said
to them:
Thus it is
written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,
and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in His name to
all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.
Now let us turn our attention to the
Apostle Peter in our first reading today, addressing the devout Jews gathered in
the portico of the Temple in Jerusalem immediately after he, Peter, together
with John, had enabled a man who had been lame from birth to walk upright for
the first time:
The God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, has
glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence, when he had decided to
release Him. You denied the Holy and
Righteous One, and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life
you put to death, but God raised Him from the dead; of this we are witnesses.
Peter was making his first attempt
to carry out the commission called to the attention of His Apostles by the Risen
Lord Jesus, that:
Repentance for
the forgiveness of sins would be preached in the name of the Christ to all
nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
Peter, who had wept so profusely
over his denials of the Lord, was immensely grateful that Jesus, appearing so
unexpectedly in that upper room, had addressed them with no words of
recrimination but only a peaceful greeting and comforting exhortations to
confidence; and he, Peter, was here trying to follow his Master’s
example:
Now I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance.
Peter was, indeed, following the
example of His Master so closely that not only did he not condemn the people who
had been led astray into sin, but he even refrained from condemning those who
had been responsible for thus leading them into sin:
I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance, just
as your leaders did.
However, since for disciples of
Christ there can be no repentance without sin being acknowledged, therefore,
Peter was trying to lead his fellow Jews to recognize and to acknowledge their
sins as he himself had so broken-heartedly acknowledged his own public betrayal
of his Lord and Master. That done, there
would be no recriminations, no accusations, only that which the Apostles -- and
above all Peter himself -- had received from Jesus: understanding and
forgiveness.
I know,
brothers, that you acted out of ignorance just as your leaders did; but God has
thus brought to fulfilment what He had announced beforehand through the mouth of
all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer.
Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be wiped
away.
Peter then went on to add a little
something more, something personal, saying:
Repent
therefore and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, that the Lord may
grant you times of refreshment.
There we see something of the beauty
of a right understanding of the work of the Church! There we realise why we call her Mother
Church: because she uses the Scriptures, given into her care by the Lord, for our refreshment: that is,
not only for our understanding and enlightenment, but also for our
consolation and comfort, our strength and our hope; if -- that is -- we will
treasure them in our hearts and ponder them lovingly in our minds as we look to
our Lord and God ever more hopefully and confidently.
Notice, People of God, in these
times when the Church is often accused of preaching homophobia, exemplified
above all by hatred of the Jews, notice that there is no hatred in Mother
Church’s earliest response to the Jews through her supreme leader on earth,
Peter the Rock who openly said:
Brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did
also your rulers.
Nor was there hatred in the personal
attitude or apostolic preaching of Paul, even though the Jewish Christians had
by then been driven out of Jerusalem and begun to experience persecution from
the Jewish authorities. Paul’s public
proclamation in his letter to the Christians of Rome testifies to
this:
I say then,
has God cast away His (Jewish) people?
Certainly not! For I also am an
Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people whom He
foreknew. (Romans
11:1-2)
People of God, be likewise in no way
afraid of charges of homophobia against the present teaching of the Church. It was Jesus’ lot to slowly grow to manhood
in order that He might bring back to God human nature in the full development
not only of its human potentialities but also of its divine possibilities, and
that is why His Resurrection is absolutely pertinent today, when men aspire to
live to the utmost. Let us learn from
Our Lord to give glory to the Father and testimony to the world as He did, the
glory and testimony of fully matured Christian men and women finding their
supreme fulfilment in living with Christ and doing the Father’s will in all
things. The contemporary desire for
integral personality in the exercise of responsible commitment is good, but let
us try to show how it can be realized in Christ alone; for in Him alone, by the
power of His Spirit, can all our warring passions be restored to their original
cohesion and unity, and in Christ alone can we find not only ourselves but also
the heavenly Father, dwelling in our soul where we can hear Him, speak with Him,
love Him, in an unceasing and ever-more intimate ‘I and Thou’ communion. All this is ours in Christ, if we use the
means He has given to us, that is His Church, His Sacraments, and His Sacred
Scriptures, our Bible. All are ours, and we are Christ’s, and Christ is the
Father’s.
St. John, addressing us for our
refreshment in the second reading, says:
(Jesus) is the
expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole
world. The way we may be sure that we
know Him, is to keep His commandments.
All true seekers after God must have
fears, at times, if not doubts, about their own sincerity as disciples of
Jesus. It is therefore refreshing,
indeed, and comforting, to hear St. John explain what makes a true disciple of
the Lord. For he tells us that, although
there are people who think themselves to be true disciples of Jesus because they
have warm feelings for Him, and can speak enthusiastic words about Him,
nevertheless, in so far as they pay little attention to His commandments, such
people are mistaken about themselves:
By this
we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.
Despite modern popular assertions,
such words are neither cold doctrine nor do they express homophobia; but, on the
contrary they are the very core and centre of Jesus’ own relationship with His
Father, and of His and His Father’s love for mankind (John 12:49-50):
I did not
speak on My own, but the Father who sent Me commanded Me what to say and
speak. And I know that His
commandment is eternal life.”
God’s commandments, People of God,
are eternal life and express divine love; they must be
understood, appreciated, and appropriately accepted and embraced as such, not
manipulated and adulterated for the human expression of pretentious,
insufficient, and ultimately fake love.
And that is why Jesus asks for that
indisputably authentic sign of love from us:
Whoever has My
commandments and observes them is the one who loves Me. Whoever does not love Me does not keep My
words; yet the word you hear is not Mine but that of the Father who sent
Me. (14:21, 24)
Far from being cold doctrine, it is
the keeping of Jesus’ commandments that alone can prepare us to receive the
ultimate privilege that human life and death can afford:
Whoever loves
Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to
him. Whoever loves Me will keep My word,
and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with
him.
And so, from the readings set before
us today by Mother Church, we have learnt something about ourselves as
Catholics: we should be here in Church not simply out of obedience responding to
our acknowledged obligation, not even out of fidelity to our bounden duty, we
should be here desiring and seeking for our supreme refreshment as true
disciples – admirers, lovers, and most willing servants -- of Jesus, by giving
our very selves to Him (above all in Holy Communion) as He gives Himself to
us.
Let us, therefore, not fail to renew
our willingness and resolve to obey His commandments for we know that His
commandments are eternal life. May
we leave this Church today gratefully strengthened and confirmed by an obedient
spirit bountifully refreshed for the service of, and witness to, Mother Church;
she who is so divinely wise as to cling resolutely to her Scriptures and to her
earliest and most firmly established teachings and traditions despite, and in
the face of, all modern flights of intellectual froth and fancy (not true scholarship) or tides of
popular, emotional feeling (not true
devotion). And thus being herself
obedient to Her Lord, and true to His founding truths and her own most ancient
traditions, she has not failed us; she has called us, in His Name, to come here
obediently today and rewarded us with the most sublime nourishment and
incomparable comfort for our souls.
