Easter Thursday
Readings:
Acts 3: 11-26
Luke 24: 35-48
Reflection
When someone close to us dies, the absolute finality of death hits us during the days that follow: we are left with the overwhelming impact of an absence. We look around and the person is not there. A mute absence lingers. During such times, we might want to ask ourselves what our faith has to say of such a situation.
The real test of our faith is whether we truly believe in Christ’s resurrection. The readings today focus on the immediate aftermath of the resurrection. They trace the lines from doubt to believe. In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter proclaims that the same Jesus rejected and killed has been glorified by God. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus appears to his terrified disciples and disproves that he is a ghost by showing them his wounds and eating fish. He moves them, as he does us, from ‘unbelief and hardness of heart’ to becoming witnesses of his resurrection.
Do we simply accept the idea of Christ’s resurrection as an intellectual concept or proposition without it actually influencing the way we live (Cardinal Newman’s idea of ‘notional assent’), or do we actually believe in Christ’s resurrection as a deeply ingrained and personal experience that informs our every behaviour and thinking (Cardinal Newman’s idea of ‘real assent’)? A life informed by ‘real assent’ is optimistic, filled with trust and confidence. It does not simply reduce life’s occurrences to the language of favours, quid pro quo, or tit for tat, but rather, it opens life out into endless possibilities of service, acceptance, understanding and forgiveness.
We pray for the grace to avoid the trap of reducing our Christian discipleship to mere morality principles. Christianity is more concerned with living than thinking. Accepting the resurrection as a way of life will not lessen the pain or rid us of life’s problems; instead, it will give us hope that there is joy beyond the pain. St Paul reminds us that ‘this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison’ (2 Cor 4:17-18).
We certainly need the grace of God to ‘open our minds to understand the scriptures’ (v.45). Maybe then will we come to feel unsatisfied and echo Mary Oliver’s words, ‘I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world’ (When Death Comes, Devotions, p. 286).
Kelvin Rodrigues is a parishioner at St. Paul of the Cross, Glen Osmond, SA.