Third Sunday of Easter

Third Sunday of Easter

 

As I have often stated Jesus asks 200 questions in the Gospel, many of which are rhetorical, so that as one author put it, we can 'live in the question', an like Mary 'ponder these things in our hearts.' Two of these questions are the focus of our meditation this Sunday.

 ‘Why are you agitated? Why are these doubts arising in your hearts?’

 Doubt and hesitation are features of all of our lives. We are fearful of the future, of what will become of our lives, our society, country, and our world. We also have personal problems, fears, doubt and anxiety over any number of things. We lack confidence, we put on masks, we are unsure of ourselves. We get discouraged easily, especially at repeated faults and failings. We think we should have learnt by now to be better people than we are.

‘Why are you agitated? Why are these doubts arising in your hearts? ‘

 These are the first things that the Lord Jesus asks of the disciples.

While there is a particular context to these questions in the Upper Room on Easter Sunday night, these are questions that can be put to us at any time.

Maybe at this moment, this week, this very day, we are undergoing some kind of crisis – of heart, of conscience, or a family dispute, a sickness.

Jesus knows that we have these problems. In fact right throughout the Easter narrative Jesus asks direct questions but with a perennial application. They are rhetorical, such as ‘what are you talking about along the way?’

Jesus wants us to hand over to him what agitates us. He wishes to say to us: ‘I am here – among you’. ‘Doubt no longer, but believe.’ Obviously in God above all, but also in ourselves – with the confidence that comes from Him.

We often can tell if someone is doubtful, hesitant or agitated by their face or body language. If we are enduring it we feel its effects in our own bodies, through indigestion, sleeplessness, anxiety and panic, through not eating properly. It is a common enough experience.

As we turn back to the context of these questions, it is made very clear that the disciples are fearful, but their doubts turn to astonished joy. What adds to the credibility and authenticity of the episode is that the Scripture does not gloss over the very shaky faith of the disciples in the Church at its beginnings. Jesus reassures them so that they might become witnesses to His death and His Resurrection. And later He will send the Spirit of wisdom and courage.

In fact an effective and credible witness is none of these things – doubtful or hesitant; rather they are confident and assured with a confidence that comes from the Lord. This is why the Lord gives them the reassurance of physical evidence – His wounded hands and feet, His ability to eat in their presence. He explains the Scriptures to them, and at last they begin to understand with hindsight what the mission of Jesus is all about, and that His mission from the Father now becomes their mission, and the mission of the Church, from Jesus Himself, to proclaim the Good News of the remission of sins and the duty of repentance, change and reform, to reconcile sinners to God, to restore broken humanity.

Each year this episode - and other appearances of Jesus like it - is repeated to us at the Easter Season, not only to remind us of what we are about as a Church, but so that individually each person can tap into the message and hear it afresh, to acknowledge once more that we are wounded healers and forgivers, that we are sinners who know our need of salvation, that we are all in need of Jesus as our personal Saviour - that our hope comes from Him. And we can only change the world in proportion to our humility – to our heartfelt honest admission that we are in as much need of Christ as anyone else. We cannot give what we do not possess. If we have truly found Christ, then we can share Him with others.

 And in the Mass once we have approached in the Penitential Rite and emptied ourselves of self, then we can be filled with His Word, and them with His Flesh in the Eucharist. Our emptiness becomes something to be filled. Our desires turn to desire for Him alone, and then we become witnesses to this as we are dismissed ‘to proclaim the Gospel’, ‘to glorify the Lord with our lives.’ Our Sunday – and daily - Mass becomes the ‘food for the journey’ that lies ahead.