3rd Sunday of Easter – April 18, 2021
In the season of Easter, seven weeks long, the church gives
us this lengthy period of Easter to help us reflect on the various dimensions
of the meaning of Easter.
One of the messages Easter proclaims is the Lord’s faithfulness to us, in spite of our unfaithfulness
to him. Because of our various failures and weaknesses, we can sometimes find
ourselves wondering by what road we can come to the Lord from whom we have
failed to followed or even turned away from. In response to that concern, the
Lord says to us, “It is not you who come to me first.
It is I who have chosen to come to you.” We find that good news
hard to believe at times. As was the case with the disciples in today’s gospel reading, doubts can rise in our hearts.
Having failed to love the Lord in various ways, we doubt that he could love us
in this all-forgiving way. Yet, this is at the heart of the message of Easter.
The
Easter appearances of Jesus invites us to open ourselves to the coming of
the
risen Lord who loves us in our weakness and frailty and empowers us to go
forth
renewed.
If we look back over our lives, we might find something or
other that we very much regret. We will almost certainly be able to identify
times when we failed to live up to the values that we try to live by. We might
remember speaking or acting in
ways that hurt others. We might be aware of not
doing something that we could have done. Sometimes these experiences of
personal failure can leave us burdened. We
can find it hard to move forward;
they; we struggle to be free of them. They can
weight heavily on us and drain
us of energy. We can find ourselves going back in
memory to them over and over
again, wishing they had never happened.
According to this morning’s gospel reading, the
risen Jesus appeared among his
disciples who not only locked themselves in a
room for fear of suffering the same fate as Jesus, but also it was a sign of
hiding from their regret and shame at
failing Jesus. Yet, it was Jesus who
broke through the uncertainty, anxiety, shame and regret. The first words from
Jesus were, “Peace be with you.” It was Jesus who stood among them in their shame and
fear, not the disciples coming to Jesus with
their fear and failure. Jesus
offered the gift of peace. In John’s gospel Jesus
told the
apostles: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I
give you. I do not give
to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be
troubled and do not be
afraid.” He was now renewing that
promise, offering a gift that the world cannot
give, nor can we attain it by
our own efforts. It is pure gift from God to those
who come with open minds and
hearts. How did he do this for the apostles and for
us today. There are three
way we can look at.
Jesus firstly showed
them his wounds. These weren’t just any old wounds.
They were the wounds of that greater love which led Jesus to lay down his life
for me and
all humanity. He continues to show us his wounds today, to bring
home to us the
depth of his love for us and the extent of his faithfulness to
us. Our own sharing of our wounds, the sharing of our pain, can also build
bridges to others. When
we are at our most vulnerable, we often draw others to
ourselves. We are called to be wounded healers like Jesus.
The Lord then opened
the Scriptures to help them understand that what happened to him, including
his passion and death, was already contained within the Jewish
Scriptures. The
risen Lord continues to speak to us today through the Scriptures. He is present
to us in his word, the word of God. Finally, the risen Lord shared a simple meal with his disciples
to convince them that he wanted to be in communion with them in spite of their
failures. The Lord continues to call us to his table
today. It is above all at
the table of the Eucharist that Jesus enters into
communion with us and invites
us to enter into communion with him. It is in the
Eucharist that we can really
appreciate that the Lord has chosen to come to us
in our brokenness and
weakness. It is from the Eucharist that Jesus sends us out
in the power of his
presence to be his witnesses and wounded healers in the world.
Fr. Don, cp