The Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, 2024

Luke 24, 35–48

The two disciples recounted what had taken place on the way, and how Jesus was made known to them 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.”

The Lord Jesus does not explain the meaning of his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  It is sufficient for him at the time of his initial appearances that they be convinced that he is truly risen from a Death foretold by the Prophets.  In the days to come he would teach them what John the Baptist cried out, catching sight of him, “Behold the Lamb of God!  Behold him who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1, 29).  But besides atonement for sin, which may seem a little abstract to us, he teaches us to hate and to avoid sin at all costs, for we see what it cost him, the love of our lives.  As St. Albert the Great writes, “Christ died for our sins so that we might flee from sin with all our heart and that we might subdue sin within us, since it was necessary for the Son of God to die for it.”  Sin put Jesus to a horrific, agonizing death; our sins put him to death.  

If, with his Death the Lord inspired us to run from that which caused it and which will cause our eternal death if we do not repent, we understand that he rose again so that spiritually we might rise with him, and strive for those things which are above.  That is, through the grace he grants those who believe in him, we are able to rise to live in such a way so  as to be worthy of heaven.  He both shows us the way to go to heaven, but he himself is the means to get there, and to be with him forever is our motive for going there.  As St. Paul writes to his flock, “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of the Father.  Know the things that are above, not the things which are on earth” (Colossians 3, 1-2).

The seventh article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass: The Nicene Creed

As we see the Apostles struggling to understand but finally believing in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, some believers in the early Church struggled to understand that Jesus, the Son of God, was both God and man, though a number of these refused to listen to the constant teaching of the Holy Church and formulated their own views, and so conforming the identity of the Lord Jesus to their limitations,  Under the heretical priest Arius, a movement grew seeking to change Church teaching.  So noisome did it become that the bishops of the Church were called to a council in the city of Nicaea in Asia Minor to make an authoritative statement that all were to believe if they were to call themselves Christians and be saved.  The Council of Nicaea concluded by composing a statement of the most basic truths about the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity.  This came to be called a “creed”, from the Latin credo [I believe], the first word of the statement.  Two small changes were added to the text in the Western Church in the 500’s to guard against encroaching errors.  The Eastern Church seriously contested the authority of the Western Church to do this and is the source of disagreement between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox .churches to this day.  It was added to the Mass locally beginning in the early Middle Ages, and by the time of Pope Innocent III (d. 1216) it had become an official part of the Mass.  in his commentary on the Mass, Innocent III declares that it is fitting for the Creed to be recited following the hearing of the Gospel because in it the Church reaffirms her belief that everything good proceeds from Christ.

Next: The Offertory Prayers