Second Sunday of Easter (A) 2014

Second Sunday of Easter (A)

John 20: 19-31

José Antonio Pagola

Jesus will save the Church

Terrified by the execution of Jesus, the disciples take refuge in a house known to them. Once more they are reunited, but Jesus is not with them. There is an emptiness no one can fill. They miss Jesus. Whom will they follow now? What will they be able to do without him? “Night is falling” in Jerusalem and also in the hearts of the disciples.

   Inside the house they remain “with doors shut.” It’s a community without a mission and no horizon, closed in on itself, with no heart to welcome anyone. No one thinks now of going to the highways  to announce the Kingdom of God and heal life. With doors closed, it is not longer possible to reach out to the suffering of people.

   The disciples are full of “fear of the Jews”. It’s a community paralyzed by fear, on the defensive. They only see hostility and rejection on all sides. Where there’s fear it is not possible to love the world as Jesus did, or to inspire courage and hope.

   Suddenly the Risen Jesus takes the initiative. He  comes to rescue his followers. “He enters the house and places himself in their midst.” The little community gets transformed. From fear they change over to the peace with which Jesus fills them. From the darkness of the night they move to the joy of seeing him again full of life. From closed doors they will soon change to the openness of the mission.

   Jesus speaks to them putting all his faith in those miserable men: “As the Father sent me, so too I send you.” He does not tell them to whom they must go , what message they must deliver, nor how to behave all the while. Already they have been able to learn from him along the roads in Galilee. They will be in the world what he has been.

   Jesus knows the weakness of his disciples. He has often found fault with the little, vacillating faith they have. They need the power of his Spirit to  fulfill his mission. So he makes a special gesture for them. He does not place his hands on them, nor does he bless them as he would the sick. He breathes on them and says:”Receive the Holy Spirit.”

    Only Jesus will save the Church. Only he will save us from the fears that paralyze us, he will break the tiresome structures in which we try to enclose him, he will open the many doors we have gone on shutting all through the centuries, he will straighten the many roads that have turned us away from him.

   What we are now being asked is to revive much more in the whole church trust in the Risen Jesus, to organize ourselves to place him fearlessly in the centre of our parishes and communities and concentrate all our energies in listening well to what his Spirit is saying to his followers, both men and women.

Why Easter Matters

Pope Francis to the World - message

Easter

Easter

Our Lenten anticipation now gives way to our celebration of the resurrection of Christ, which ‘is not something that we can master; it is only something we can receive’. James Hanvey SJ explains how the scriptural accounts of the appearances of the risen Christ can help us to see with Easter eyes.

We have reached our celebration of Easter, the centre of the Church’s liturgical year and the source of Christian life and faith. Yet Easter often appears as the poor relation of Christmas. Whether you believe or not, there is something about Christmas that manages to touch everyone. But without Easter there would be no Christmas.

In many ways, Easter makes more demands upon us. The empty tomb is not like the manger: if we go there we do not find the beautiful, serene mother with her newborn baby, an adoring and gently protective father, and heaven and earth somehow caught in a silent moment of adoration. At the empty tomb there is, well, an absence, not a presence. So, Easter really invites us into something utterly new. It is rather frightening because it transgresses all our ways of thinking, what we know – or think we know – about the world and how we live in it.

We get used to ‘knowing’ in a particular way. We are uneasy with things we can’t master or that don’t match our categories. We’re always trying to fit things into time, space, matter ; even when we encounter something utterly new like ‘dark matter’ or particles that we know only by their traces, we want to fit them in to some familiar conceptual framework. But the resurrection of Christ cannot be fitted in like that. It is not something that we can master; it is only something we can receive. We can only let it transform us and our whole way of thinking and seeing and being. In a sense, we find the resurrection difficult not because we are so earth bound – the whole of creation sings it; it is because we are so self-bound, we see only the problematic absence of the empty tomb.

Those strange resurrection appearances in scripture can help us if we will let them. If we throttle them with our questions and demands, they remain only silent and dumb. They wait for us to calm down, to release our control and quieten our fears. Then they begin to open to us, but on their terms.

They keep moving in and out of focus; at once they are astonishing in their simplicity, directness and even materiality, but they remain elusive. They describe a world we recognise, and yet it is a world that is now so different; it has a new reality and property which we cannot grasp even though it acts upon us and, indeed, invites us to so transform our minds, understanding and life, that we are left confused and stunned.

Like all those who encounter the risen Christ, it takes us time to adjust, to come into focus. You will notice that it is the risen Christ who comes to us, not we who can summon him. We must learn to wait with a new openness and humility – there is no other way of knowing him than by receiving him. You’ll notice, too, in the delicate luminosity of the resurrection accounts there is no awe, no stunning effects to accompany a divine revelation. It is all quietness, stillness, simplicity and intimacy. This alone is uncanny and yet it tells us something about the way in which Christ always is with us.

Perhaps the most profound thing is the absence of recrimination. Jesus does not blame or punish his disciples for their betrayals. He never mentions it; with a beautiful delicacy he speaks to them by name, shares their food, consoles them, heals their doubts and calms their fears, and then gives himself to them. He actually trusts them with the truth about himself and places his mission in their hands. There is no  looking back. They are called to journey into a new world and a new history. This is the unspoken grace of forgiveness and its freedom that he offers us.

At the end of John’s Gospel is the encounter between Peter and the risen Jesus. No blame, only that question: ‘Simon Peter, do you love me?’ It is not only the forgiveness for his denials; it is the condition of his mission. Only when Peter, with all his broken history, can confess his love of Jesus can he confess his faith in him. For love is the only way to this sort of knowledge – not just knowing, but living and following. It is Peter’s resurrection into life, into his true self; into who Jesus calls him to be. So, at some point in all our lives we will meet this risen Jesus and if we can only say. ‘I love you’ then we will begin to know what life really is. We will have Easter eyes.



James Hanvey SJ holds the Lo Schiavo Chair in Catholic Social Thought at the University of San Francisco.

Easter is ....

Easter Is……..!

-Fr. Cedric Prakash sj*

In his Spiritual Exercises (#299) St. Ignatius of Loyola invites the exercitant to contemplate on Jesus’ first Apparition after his Resurrection: to his beloved Mother. It is the most natural thing that Jesus would do - to spend value-time with the one woman who accompanied him throughout his life. St. Ignatius reminds us ‘Scripture supposes that we have understanding, as it is written, “Are you also without understanding?”’  This apparition was undoubtedly a very personal and profound experience both for Mother and Son. Easter is....a personal and profound experience of our risen Lord!

Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene: a woman is chosen to be the first communicator of the ‘Good News’, the prima Evangelizer.  Jesus consistently took a stand for women. He broke down taboos and challenged the mindset of a highly patriarchal society.  Appearing to Mary Magdalene, early that Easter morn, was his powerful statement and appreciation of the significant role women had to play in his Church and society.  Easter is....a deeper realization that all women and men are created equal in the image and likeness of God!

Pope Francis highlights this powerful recognition of women by Jesus when he says, “The Church acknowledges the indispensable contribution which women make to society through the sensitivity, intuition and other distinctive skill sets which they, more than men, tend to possess.” (Evangelii Gaudium #103)  Easter is....the courage to accept the indispensable role of women in Church and society!

On Maundy Thursday, Pope Francis once again gave the world a very moving example as he washed the feet of differently-abled persons of different ages, ethnicities and religious confessions - among them were four women and a Muslim. The Pope gave the world a powerful reminder of Jesus’ commandment of love “if I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”  Easter is....the humility and love we need to be inclusive - to bend down and wash the feet of the others!

At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread, broke it and shared it among his disciples. He does a fairly similar exercise with the cup of wine. Not all present are able to grasp the totality and meaning of this supreme act of love. Later, on the road to Emmaus, the disciples are unable to recognize Jesus along the route but they finally do so at the breaking of the bread. Easter is....the ability to recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread and in doing so – to heal the brokenness of our world!

The Risen Lord brings peace to all those whom he meets after his Resurrection!  The world we live in today is becoming more and more fragmented, torn apart by violence, sectarianism, hatred, divisiveness, inequalities and injustices.  This is our context and none of us can abdicate the role and responsibility that is given to us by the Lord, to be channels of his peace, to sow love everywhere. Easter is....the commitment to be communicators of the Lord’s peace to all around us!

Easter is....ALL THIS and much more!

19^th April, 2014

 

Why did Jesus have to die the way he did?

How do we know Jesus rose from the dead?

Why Focus on the Cross and not just the Resurrection?

Fr. Barron comments on the Meaning of Easter (+playlist)