“For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.”
― Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
(How do you experience this risenness these days?)
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ACTS 3:11-26; Ps 8:2AB AND 5, 6-7, 8-9
LK 24:35-48
The disciples of Jesus recounted what had taken place along the way,
and how they had come to recognize him in the breaking of bread.
While they were still speaking about this,
he stood in their midst and said to them,
“Peace be with you.”
But they were startled and terrified
and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
Then he said 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.
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed,
he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?”
They gave him a piece of baked fish;
he took it and ate it in front of them.
He said to them,
“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,
that 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.
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 the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.”
Reflection on the Scriptures |
This was a year when Easter just did not seem like Easter. Today the feeling of resurrection seems very distant to me. Many of us are confined to our homes in ways not totally dissimilar to the apostles locking themselves away in that upper room. Here is where the first reading offers some hope (at least to me). The time between Easter and Pentecost was a time of uncertainty for the apostles. I see my world
as uncertain. My hope and my prayer are that after this Lenten and Easter experience I may be open to the transformation of Pentecost.
Dear Lord,
The world about me changes profoundly week to week.
I am bothered by my inability to control my destiny.
Help me to find strength in my weakness and to let God be God.
Grant me awareness of the resurrection around me.
Allow me to grow in hope and trust.
Open my heart to your Spirit.
- by Mike Cherney
Revelations of Divine Love
- by Julian of Norwich
Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 73
Two manners of sickness that we have: impatience, or sloth;—despair, or mistrustful dread
For when we begin to hate sin, and amend us by the ordinance of Holy Church, yet there dwelleth a dread that letteth us, because of the beholding of our self and of our sins afore done. And some of us because of our every-daily sins: for we hold not our Covenants, nor keep we our cleanness that our Lord setteth us in, but fall oftentimes into so much wretchedness that shame it is to see it. And the beholding
of this maketh us so sorry and so heavy, that scarsely we can find any comfort.
And this dread we take sometime for a meekness, but it is a foul blindness and a weakness. And we cannot despise it as we do another sin, that we know [as sin]: for it cometh [subtly] of Enmity, and it is against truth. For it is God's will that of all the properties of the blissful Trinity, we should have most sureness and comfort in Love: for Love maketh Might and Wisdom full meek to us. For right as by the
courtesy of God He forgiveth our sin after the time that we repent us, right so willeth He that we forgive our sin, as anent our unskilful heaviness and our doubtful dreads.
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