Fr. Manuel João, comboni missionary
Sunday Reflection
from the womb of my whale, ALS
Our cross is the pulpit of the Word

The Great Sunday of Holy Joy

Year B – Easter Time – 3rd Sunday
Luke 24:35-48: “You are witnesses to this”

The Church celebrates the mystery of Easter during seven weeks, from Easter to Pentecost, a period of fifty days, the time of ‘holy joy’, considered by the ancient Church fathers as ‘the great Sunday’. These seven Sundays invite us to celebrate Easter… seven times (the fullness!). Throughout this time, liturgical prayer was done standing, as a sign of the resurrection: “We consider that we are not allowed to fast or pray on our knees on Sundays. We practice the same abstention with joy from Easter Day until Pentecost” (Tertullian).

Last Sunday we heard the apparitions of the Risen Lord to the apostles, on the first and eighth days, recounted by John. Today we hear the version of the event according to the evangelist Luke. This concludes the (three) Sundays in which the gospel presents us with resurrection narratives.

1. The three apparitions in the gospel of Luke

In chapter 24, the concluding chapter of his gospel, Luke tells us about three apparitions: 1) the first, on Easter morning, that of the angels to the women, near the empty tomb; 2) the second, in the afternoon of the same day, the apparition of the Risen One to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus; 3) the third, in the evening, the apparition of Jesus to the Eleven, in Jerusalem.

The story ends with the ascension of Jesus into heaven. We note well that it all takes place on the same day, Easter Day! It is an extremely long day! How can this be reconciled with what the other evangelists recount? One must remember that the gospels were written several decades after the events. The facts were by then known within the Christian communities, handed down orally. The evangelists, when writing their gospel, take into account not only history, but also, above all, the situation of their communities. That is, they have a theological and catechetical intention. Here Luke wants to emphasise the Christian’s Sunday and its close relationship with the Lord’s Passover. This is a literary artifice. In fact, the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles presents things a little differently: “He showed himself alive to them after his passion, with many proofs, during forty days” (1:3).

2. The difficulty in believing in the resurrection

All the gospels emphasise the disciples’ difficulty in believing in the resurrection, to the point that Jesus “rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart” (Mark 16:14; Luke 24:25). On the other hand, Jesus was keen to be recognised because the future of the Mission depended on it. “Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed!”. Since the apostles still found it hard to believe, Jesus asked them for something to eat. “And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes”. Can a resurrected body eat?! This is perhaps a stretch by the evangelist to emphasise the reality of the resurrection of Jesus’ body. Peter will say to the centurion Cornelius: “We ate and drank with him after his resurrection from the dead” (Acts 10:41). This statement emphasises not only the veracity of the resurrection, but also the resumption of Jesus’ intimate relationship with his own. Furthermore, St Luke, writing for the communities of Greek culture that devalued the body, considering it to be the prison of the soul, wants to highlight the reality of the resurrection of the body.

Faith in the resurrection was the fruit of a laborious journey, where doubts, uncertainties and fears were not lacking. This, on the one hand, heartens us in our struggle to believe; on the other hand, it is proof for us that the resurrection is not an invention of the apostles.

3. The resurrection, the key to the meaning of life

The resurrection is the greatest of the truths of our faith and the primordial object of our Christian message. The resurrection is the “gospel”, the good news that the Christian is sent to proclaim. Everything else comes as a consequence. And the first consequence is that, if Christ is risen, we too shall rise with him. His resurrection and ours are in a way interchangeable, according to St Paul: if Jesus is risen, we shall also rise with him (see Romans 6) and, on the other hand, “if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither is Christ risen” (1 Corinthians 15:13). With the resurrection we profess that life has a “meaning”: it does not go towards nothingness, but towards its fullness. If we do not believe in the resurrection, we profess the non-sense of life: “man is a useless passion” (Jean-Paul Sartre), a “being devoted to death” (Heidegger).

For a Christian, believing in the resurrection may seem like something obvious but, unfortunately, it is not. In 2009, in a survey conducted in France, only 13% of Catholics answered that they believe in the resurrection, while 40% said they believe there is “something” after death and 33% that there is nothing! Three years ago (2021), a survey in Italy showed that only 20% of Italians believe in the resurrection of the dead. Many people repeat every Sunday: “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting” or “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come”, but it is by no means taken for granted that what they say with their lips they actually believe in their hearts. That it is a real nonsense to call oneself a Christian without believing in the resurrection was already peremptorily stated by St Paul: “If Christ is not risen, vain then is our preaching, vain also is your faith. We, then, are false witnesses of God. (…) If we have had hope in Christ for this life only, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Corinthians 15: 14-15.19). Take away the resurrection and the whole edifice collapses. Christianity would be the greatest farce in history.

4. To be witnesses to the resurrection

“You are witnesses to this”, Jesus tells the apostles at the conclusion of the gospel. Today he says it to us. How can we bear witness to it? By cultivating in us, with the help of grace, the consciousness that we are already risen with Christ and that we are living in the ‘third day’, in the final and definitive Day, that of the resurrection, even if the wounds from our cross are still bleeding. Jesus did not want his to heal before ours. He bears our wounds and those of all the crucified of history. How do we heal these wounds? By caring for the suffering humanity around us!

For personal reflection: compare your faith in the resurrection with what St Paul says in First Corinthians, chapter 15.

Manuel João Pereira Correia mccj
Verona, 11 April 2024

For full reflection, see: https://comboni2000.org/2024/04/11/la-mia-riflessione-domenicale-la-grande-domenica-della-santa-allegrezza/