Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize
that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word. The same worldview shift that is demanded by the resurrection of Jesus is the shift that will enable us to transform the world.
- N. T. Wright
Let this affirmation nourish your hope in a future guided by the Spirit.
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Acts 3:11-26
Psalm 8:2ab and 5, 6-7, 8-9 Luke 24:35-48 The disciples told their story of what had happened on the road and how they
had recognised Jesus at the breaking of bread.
They were still talking about all this when Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you!’ In a state of alarm and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he said, ‘Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I
have.’ And as he said this he showed them his hands and feet. Their joy was so great that they still could not believe it, and they stood there dumbfounded; so he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes.
Then he told them, ‘This is what I meant when I said, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and
in the Psalms has to be fulfilled.’ He then opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘So you see how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to this.’
Reflection on the Scriptures
In our first reading in Acts we find Peter and John facing the challenge of how to respond to Easter. Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension had all occurred just as it was foretold. That
unbelievable path to forgiveness for all sins was now finished. But what next? Was the work now complete, or was there a next step for the disciples as well as for all the people then and now? In that environment, it had to be disappointing to Peter when he saw that the people who had experienced all this, had yet missed the point. They failed to grasp that Jesus really was the Son of God, the Creator of the universe. They liked the miracles, but missed the truth about
the incredible gift of salvation and what that gift meant to their individual lives. They focused more on the gift – the miracles - than on the Giver. Peter clearly reminded them that Jesus is the one and only Son of God and that all that He accomplished was a gift from the Most High. Faith in God had to serve as their foundation - the starting point of proceeding with all that God expected from them, and us. Of course faith in Jesus as our savior must be our foundation, but Peter goes on to point out that we must also repent and refocus our lives on Jesus - His message and His example. This Reading reminds us that salvation is the gift, not the miracles themselves. The miracles served as a means to opening hearts to who Jesus is. They clearly exemplified that He truly was the all
powerful Son of God, the creator of the universe. Yet God’s presence in their midst was often just too much for their minds to comprehend. They eagerly sought after miraculous gifts from God while missing the obvious point. It is easy for us today to judge those living while Jesus walked the earth. How could they not “get it”? But are we really any different. Do we not run to Jesus in prayer when we face difficulties - when we need a miracle - while missing
who God really is and how we should be responding to Him. He alone deserves our endless worship. He alone is responsible for the countless little miracles that our Savior showers upon us each and every day. Does our Easter celebrations not remind us of who the almighty God really is and how much He loves us? -by Larry
Hopp
The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, by James Arraj
https://innerexplorations.com/catchtheomor/resurrecion.htm Inner Growth Publications, 2007.
Chapter 4: The Resurrection of Jesus The Resurrection Body of Jesus The principle we saw in which a higher intensity being when
united with a lower intensity being gives that lower being a higher way of existing in virtue of that union finds its highest application in the relationship between the humanity of Jesus and his deepest identity as the Word. The first followers of Jesus and the generations of Christians who followed struggled to articulate this relationship even while they affirmed it. They wrestled with the fact that on one hand Jesus was a genuine human being, yet on the other he was the very Word of God. But
if he was the Word, then how could he not be aware of being the Word? Yet if he was aware of being the Word, wouldn’t the light of that awareness overshadow his humanity to such a degree that he would really not be like us after all?
Jacques Maritain proposed an ingenious solution to this dilemma. He affirmed that the very center of Jesus’ identity, his deepest personality, was indeed his existence as
the Word. But in regard to his humanity this existence as the Word was buried in the depths of what Maritain called his spiritual unconscious, those far reaches of the human spirit which are beyond the ego and its conceptual workings, not because they are beneath it in the form of some sort of primitive instinctive unconscious, but because they are above it. This dwelling of the Word in the depths of the human soul of Jesus, while it bathed his soul with a light and warmth coming from the fact
he was, indeed, the Word, did not flood his soul with a dazzling vision of God. It was only in Jesus’ death and resurrection that the translucent partition that separated Jesus’ being as the Word from his human soul gave way, and the humanity of Jesus was fully transformed by his divinity.
Maritain explains this hypothesis in a little book called On the Grace and Humanity of Jesus, and I have
commented on it elsewhere.49 What is important for us here is to imagine the sun of Jesus’ divinity in the deepest depths of Jesus’ humanity bathing his human spirit in its warmth and glow, but not yet blazing forth.
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