THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR (B)
(Acts of the
Apostles 3:13-15, 17-19; 1 John 2:1-5; Luke 24:35-48)
The two disciples
whom Jesus had encountered as they were walking towards Emmaus -- though their
hearts had been burning within them as He spoke with them and opened the
Scriptures to them – had only recognized Him at the breaking of bread in the
course of a meal which they had invited Him to share with them. And then He had suddenly disappeared -- vanished
from their sight – we are told; whereupon they themselves set off back to
Jerusalem without delay to inform the apostles.
Notice, however,
that when Jesus suddenly appeared again to those same disciples, now secretly
gathered, in Jerusalem, together with the Eleven and other unnamed followers of
His:
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, He asked them,
‘Have you anything to eat?’ They gave
Him a piece of fish, (which) he took and ate in front of them.
This time Jesus did
not confirm His identity by sharing bread and wine with the assembled group, He
simply confirmed that He was no ghost by eating some fish before them. Why did He not break bread with them as He
had done before?
Now, it is true that
unlike the two disciples alone on the way to Emmaus, the group assembled with
the Eleven in Jerusalem, would seem to have recognized Jesus immediately,
although they could not believe, as it was said, ‘for joy’. Nevertheless, there is a more fundamental
reason for Jesus’ behaviour in that private room in Jerusalem which is closely
connected with our other readings today.
For, in the Gospel reading Jesus took care to explain to His disciples
the nature of His presence with them; He was not, He explained, with them as He
had been previously:
He said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you WHILE I WAS
STILL WITH YOU.”
In other words He
was saying, “I am here with you now, but not as I was with you when I spoke
those words to you a short while ago.”
His new presence was different from His earlier presence: previously He
had been with them as any man is with His fellow men; now however, having died
on Calvary and risen in glory on the third day, He was no longer with them in
that ordinary, worldly, way.
So, let us now note
just how different was this, His new presence in their midst,
before going on to learn in what other ways He would subsequently make Himself
present to all His future disciples.
First, walking along
with those two disciples going towards Emmaus, He had taken great care to
explain His presence in and through the Scriptures:
“Everything written about Me in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and
Psalms must be fulfilled." Then He
opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
That original
presence in the Scriptures might be called Jesus’ first mode of spiritual
presence to the Church beginning, as it did, with the Law of Moses, then
followed by the Prophets, the Psalms, and all the Old Testament Scriptures, as
Jesus Himself said.
His new presence had
been announced in our Gospel reading when the two disciples who had been on
their way to Emmaus reported to the Eleven in Jerusalem:
How Jesus was made known
to them in the breaking of bread.
That new and
second mode of spiritual presence to the Church – Jesus’ Eucharistic
presence -- had been prepared for by Jesus in His teaching and by His miracles
during the course of His public ministry, before being formally instituted at
the Last Supper with His Apostles.
In today’s Gospel
reading, however, when He -- suddenly and alarmingly -- stood in the midst of
the assembly consisting of the Eleven, the two Emmaus disciples, and other
companions, His presence is drawn to our attention by His not
celebrating or directly recalling the Eucharist! Instead He indicates the reality, though not
the physicality, of what we now recognize as His third mode of spiritual
presence to us in the Church:
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."
This is the presence
He had foretold with the words:
Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the
midst of them. (Matt 18:20)
Thus, we can find
Jesus, experience in varying measure His presence, in the Old Testament
Scriptures, in the Eucharist, and in the assembly gathered together in His name
to hear, appreciate, and appropriate His Gospel. He is not with us today as an ordinary human
being as was the case formerly with His disciples in Palestine; but He is
always truly present for us, and to be found by us, in the Scriptures; always
spiritually present to, and in communion with, all those assembled together
to proclaim His Name and promote His Gospel; and supremely, always Personally –
in the physical reality of His own glorious and most precious Body and Blood –
with us and for us in His Eucharistic presence.
As Peter explained
to those who had witnessed his cure of the lame man:
By faith in His name, this man -- whom you see and know -- His name has
made strong, and the faith that comes through it has given him this perfect
health, in the presence of all of you. (Acts 3:16)
Living by ‘faith in
His name’ is the supremely authentic way of both responding with personal
intimacy to the presence of Jesus and bearing public witness to Him, as St.
John told us in his letter for our second reading:
Whoever keeps His word, the love of God is truly perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.
The way that we may be sure that we know Him is to keep His commandments.
By signalling the
various modes of His presence to and for His believers Jesus was preparing His
Church for her great world-wide mission to proclaim:
Repentance and forgiveness
of sins in His name to all the nations.
Some of the earliest
Christians were still very closely bound up with their Jewish brethren in the
synagogue, indeed many still worshipped among them in the Temple. However, in our Gospel reading Jesus is
preparing His Church for the future, and it is essential that she and her
proclamation of the Good News be recognized as distinct from and independent of
her Jewish origins: for while those origins are never to be denied, neither
they could ever be or even appear to be either exclusive or definitive:
Repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be preached in His name to all
the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.
Henceforth for all
disciples of Jesus, the Torah must yield to the Gospel, the Good News; the
Church would replace the Temple as the house where God is pleased to dwell: to
receive worship and praise for His unique glory; to be loved and adored for His
own sublime beauty and truth; to be most trustfully invoked and whole-heartedly
thanked for His unfathomable goodness and enduring faithfulness. Above all, however, God Himself would no
longer be simply worshipped as the Lord of Creation, and the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, Who formed Israel and subsequently rescued her from slavery in
Egypt and exile in Babylon; but recognized supremely and uniquely as the One
God and Father Who gave His own and only true Son to share human flesh with and
for human-kind, and Who, by the rising of Jesus Christ -- His Son and Our
Saviour -- from the bonds of our death, has prepared a new creation: a family
of adopted children living by and sharing in the power and the glory of His
Only-Begotten, and, in His Name, being led ever heavenwards -- though through
many trials and tribulations – along the path which He Himself did tread, into
the eternal Father’s presence, by His Holy Spirit.
He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things
new." And He said to me,
"Write, for these words are true and faithful." (Rev 21:5)
And now, we can
recognize and admire, indeed love, another mystery – God’s mysteries are always
astoundingly beautiful, wondrously fulfilling, endlessly and intriguingly
mysterious -- which is Our Blessed Lady’s membership of the original Church, for that presence can surely be seen
as a presence of Jesus to His Church, for who could look at Mary and
listen to her without thinking of Jesus!!
It was a presence of the Lord unique in character, both human and
mystical, a presence specially given for the Church’s sufferings at birth.
After the joy
(indescribable!) of her dear Son’s Resurrection; after the happiness she had
known (for Him) at His Ascension, what else remained for Mary on earth? How could she possibly look forward to
anything ahead of her here below … her Love, her Lord, her Son had gone … she
rejoiced for Him and indeed for all His disciples … but for herself? Why had she not been allowed to follow her
Son, why did He not call her to Himself in His Ascension? What would she find, what could she do, in
the Body of Christ, His Church; what might she derive from her experience
there? Happily, she had long ago learnt
to die to herself, and so, if any such thoughts as these entered her mind she
would most certainly never have entertained or developed them; but she could
never forget her Son’s dying words to her:
Woman, behold your son!
There are but two
facts of which we know that can illuminate this mysterious part of Mary’s life
on earth after her Son’s Resurrection: first of all, from the Church’s
viewpoint, she was needed to be a mother, the mother, for all the
children Jesus, from His Cross on Calvary, had committed to her loving
care. How? She did not know; she would
await, pray for, listen to, and obey the Holy Spirit Jesus was bestowing on His
Church. Secondly, from Mary’s point of
view and to our great delight, her subsequent experience of the Spirit and her
work with and for her children in the Church was such as to prepare her finally
to follow her blessed Son. At the
Father’s behest and in the power of His Spirit, she would follow her beloved
Son from His Church; and thanks to her experience in His Church, she would now
be fully able and prepared to embrace and respond to her ultimate destiny and
calling, as Queen of heaven, leaving behind her such a blessed memory among her
children on earth, that the Church Jesus had founded and endowed would
henceforth be called Mother Church by her devoted children.
