Wednesday in the Second Week of Easter, April 30, 2025

John 3, 16-21

God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

These words come at the end of the Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus, but because the Greek text does not feature punctuation, which was only developing at that time, it is not easy to tell whether these words are those of the Lord or John’s own commentary on what the Lord has just said.  Most scholars agree that these are John’s words.

“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  While this verse is familiar and appears very simple, its implications are enormous.  First, we see that God loves the “world”, which contrasts with how Jesus often uses “world”, which is as that which is opposed to heaven.  This tells us that the world’s failings and even wickedness cannot prevent God from loving it: our own wickedness cannot keep the Lord from loving us, though it will keep us from experiencing his love and receiving his mercy.  However, not only does God love the world, but he “so loved” the world that “he gave his only-begotten Son”.  The Greek word translated here as “he gave” has many meanings, including “to offer”, “to command”, “to pour”, and, significantly, “to utter” — since from all eternity the Father spoke the Word.  “Gave up” actually works better here than simply “he gave”, since the Father’s will was that his Son “empt[y] himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man” (Philippians 2, 7).  This tells us what kind of love the Father had for the world: it was not merely the regard of a Creator for his creation, or a love that would be repaid in kind, but a thoroughly gratuitous love which benefitted the lover in no way but benefitted the receiver in every way.  The verse reveals God as One who is much more even than all-powerful, all-knowing, and omnipresent: he is our Lover, and his love is infinite.  

“So that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  This part of the verse reveals the prime benefit of his love for us: that all who believe in his Son might have eternal life.  This means to take firmly into hearts what the Son teaches us, to obey his commandments, and to persevere in our faith in him. By doing this, we open ourselves up to his mercy, which leads to eternal life.  By refusing to do this, we close ourselves off from the life he so much wants to give us and turns us towards the darkness of eternal death.  We see this eagerness to give us life in the next verse: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  Despite sins worse than those that brought on the great Flood, Almighty God continues to love us.  And yet, as John reflects, “The Light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to Light, because their works were evil.”  Despite all the signs of God’s love, manifested in the beauty and order of the natural world as well as in the words of his Prophets and the Life, Death, and Resurrection of his Son for our sake, there are many who reject him, preferring the darkness of their self-absorption to the light of love.  The irrationality of such a choice seems baffling, and would be hard to believe if it were not for the examples we see of it in the Scriptures, as in the very determined hatred of Judas and Caiphas, who were given multiple opportunities to turn away from their homicidal hatred of Jesus, and refused.

“But whoever lives the truth comes to the Light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”  The saints are those who “live the truth” revealed by the Lord Jesus, that is, the truth of the surpassing love of God, and who respond with joy to it.  This response shows itself in devotion to prayer, to penance, to alms-giving, and to giving themselves to God as they have seen God giving up his Son for them.  

Tuesday in the Second Week of Easter, April 29, 2025

John 3, 7-15

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus answered and said to him, ‘How can this happen?” Jesus answered and said to him, “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this? Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony. If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

We know very little about Nicodemus apart from what we find in St. John’s Gospel.  He was a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, which makes him at least middle-aged at the time he speaks to Jesus.  He was given a Greek name, a not uncommon practice among the Jews of that time.  From his conversation with the Lord we learn that he was eager to learn but careful in evaluating what he heard, and from working with Joseph of Arimathea we know him to be loyal to the truth once he accepted it.  His feast day — for he is considered a saint — is on August 31, although for centuries it was celebrated in the West on August 3.

St. John quotes the Lord Jesus as saying to Nicodemus, “If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”  John was fascinated by the way the Lord used ordinary “earthly” things to teach about heavenly things, and we see John giving several examples of this throughout his Gospel.  In fact, in his prologue to the Gospel, John refers to the Son of God as “The Word”, himself using a familiar “earthly” idea to talk about the divine reality of who the Word is.  We think of a word as an expression conceived by the mind, formed on the tongue, and spoken, accompanied by a breath: the Father, who conceived the Son from all eternity, speaking the Word — “generating” or “begetting” him — and the accompanying breath, the Holy Spirit (from spiritus, “spirit” or “breath”).  The Lord himself uses the wine at the wedding of Cana to teach about grace; the Temple in Jerusalem, to teach about his Body; the bread with which he fed the five thousand, to talk about the need all have to eat his Flesh; and the water in the Samaritan well, to teach about the water of baptism.  More examples could be given.  I would suggest that he also was teaching when he called his Mother, and also Mary Magdalene, “woman”. This was not a common way of addressing a woman, so when Jesus does this, it sticks out in our minds.  We ought to think of where the word comes from, and we should think back to the early pages of Genesis, where it says that “Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’, because she was taken out of ‘man’ ” (Genesis 2, 23).  Perhaps Jesus, by addressing these women as “woman” was identifying himself as Adam, or, rather, the New Adam, as St. Paul would do (cf. Romans 5, 12-21).  And, in the case of the Virgin Mary, identifying her as the New Eve, as St. Irenaeus taught in the second century.

All around us figures of the divine cloak themselves in ordinary, earthly things: the sunrise, the wind, clouds that sometimes hide the sun, the sand of a beach, a mountain, a river, the rain, sleep and waking, birth and death.  This is not accidental but something we should expect from God, who leaves his tracks even for the godless to follow so as to find him.  By looking for the deeper meaning of earthly things we can begin to think with a spiritual mind which will allow us to grow in our faith and to see God here even before we see him in heaven.

Monday in the Second Week of Easter, April 28, 2025

John 3, 1-8

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man once grown old be born again? Surely he cannot reenter his mother’s womb and be born again, can he?” Jesus answered, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born of water and Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

St. John notes that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night.  In modern times, people often meet professionally or socially after dark, but in the ancient world and until the Industrial Age, this did not happen.  He would have stolen through the empty, unlit streets of Jerusalem for the house where it was said Jesus was staying, like a conspirator or a thief going to meet a comrade.  He would not have made his plans known to anyone lest he be thought of by his peers as “that man’s follower”.  Still, Nicodemus had watched Jesus and listened carefully to his words.  He was puzzled and troubled, and where others let their uneasiness keep them from the Nazarene, Nicodemus had the integrity to go and talk to him away from the crowds and to learn for himself if this was the Messiah.

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing unless God is with him.”  Nicodemus sums up in one line the argument Jesus was to make over and over to the Pharisees and Sanhedrin.  We can contrast the clear thinking of Nicodemus with the twisted, contorted denials of his brethren who would rather make the patently absurd claim that Jesus cast out demons by the power of the chief of the demons than entertain the merest possibility that he might be doing the work of God.  

“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.”  John quotes parts of the ensuing conversation, and not all of it, and so it sounds rather abrupt and cryptic.  But these are the words the Lord spoke to Nicodemus.  They may seem obvious to us, but they speak of a profound mystery.  Unless one is “born from above”, a phrase Nicodemus would have have heard before, a person cannot “see” the Kingdom of God.  The Lord is speaking of grace.  But how do we believe in the Kingdom of heaven before we receive grace?  The soul is drawn to God even while still walking in the darkness before grace and willingly goes to him to learn who he is.  At that time, the person is able to learn much about God, yet much remains in darkness.  It is possible by the moonlight to see outlines and this is enough to go on for a while.  But then curiosity gives way to desire and this in turn gives way to love, and then grace comes as the rising of the sun.  In the full light of grace we “see” with the eyes of faith — we believe.

“How can a man once grown old be born again?”  Nicodemus knows that the Lord is using ordinary words to speak of extraordinary things, but he needs the Lord to teach him the vocabulary of the Kingdom of which he speaks.  “What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit.”  Jesus teaches Nicodemus that he is speaking of spiritual realities.  To a man well-educated in the very physical Law of Moses, this is an entirely new way of thinking.  The idea of spiritual rebirth was prefigured in the Old Law through the sacrifice of the scapegoat and in the purification laws, but here it stands out, in its fullness, in the clarity of the daylight.  In an instant, the darkness becomes light, and we can see clearly what we could not even guess at before.  “The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  We cannot see the wind, but we can see its effects in the trees or on the dust that normally lays quietly on the street.  We cannot read people’s minds, but when we see a businessman hurrying to a merchant’s stall we can surmise that he is interested in a transaction.  Likewise, we cannot see the Holy Spirit, but when we see a person performing a gratuitous act of kindness for another, or we see a young woman giving up her life to God as a religious, we know that he is the prime Actor.

In the night of this life we stumble about for our Lord, urged on by our love for him, progressing towards him even now with the help of the Holy Spirit.   Finally, the darkness will be stripped away and we will stand in the bright glory of the Lord’s presence, seeing him as he is.  “We know that when he shall appear we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3, 2).

The Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2025

John 20, 19–31

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”  Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”  Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”  Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

“On the evening of that first day of the week.”  According to St. John, the Lord had appeared to Mary Magdalene in the morning of the first day of the week.  Two of the Apostles had looked for him in the tomb but only saw his carefully wrapped and rolled burial cloths there.  They did not see the Lord until that evening, which would have marked the beginning of the next day.  We might wonder that the Lord made his Apostles wait all those hours.  It must have been agony for them.  On the one hand, they were hiding in the house for fear that the leaders of the Jews would come for them next, and on the other, they had the report of Mary Magdalene that he was alive and that she had touched him, and the report of John and Peter that the tomb was strangely empty.  But if the Apostles had possessed greater faith, they would have stayed at the tomb, keeping vigil for a Resurrection the Lord had promised them more than once, and they would have seen the stone roll back from it and the Lord emerge.  Their faith and hope would have been rewarded with certainty, and they would have shared at once in the Lord’s victory.  Locking themselves in the house, turning over in their minds what they feared and the Lord’s message to them through Mary Magdalene: “I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God” (John 20, 17), they truly suffered his loss.

The long hours ticked by.  They spent the time praying and reflecting.  They had not gone to the Cross, they had not waited at the tomb.  Now they hid in a house that did not belong to them.  They did not see him because they had not remained close to him.  They had not persevered in their faith but had let their fears overcome them.  Self-preservation, a very natural motivation, had taken over, but at the risk of losing the Lord.  His words must have sounded clearly in their memories: “For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it.  For what does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matthew 16, 25-26).  So they had perhaps gained a few more hours or days or years of life, but had jeopardized their eternal salvation.

And then, as the sun went down and the earth darkened and lamps needed to be lit and their yearning for their Lord could hardly be borne any longer, “Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ ”  John tells us that “the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”  He came to them with the blessing of peace, and while he would later scold them for the smallness of their faith, as he had done before, he had come back to them, and was involving them in his enduring mission to the people of the world: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  After all that had happened, he still regarded them as his Apostles, and they rejoiced both in his Resurrection and in his love for them.  Thomas had gone from them but would return.  He would wait in uncertainty a further week when the Lord relieved his doubts and gave him cause for exclaiming, “My Lord and my God!”

We are near our Lord through our faith, and experience his nearness to us through prayer especially before the Blessed Sacrament, the reading of the Gospels, meditation on his Life, Death, and Resurrection, and through the good works we do for his sake.  If we stay near to him, we shall surely see him when he comes.

Easter Saturday, April 26, 2025

Mark 16, 9–15

When Jesus had risen, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told his companions who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.  After this he appeared in another form to two of them walking along on their way to the country. They returned and told the others; but they did not believe them either. But later, as the Eleven were at table, Jesus appeared to them and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised. He said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

The verses used for the Gospel reading for today’s Mass were probably not written by St. Mark because they mainly repeat what he has already said just before, and these feature a different style than the one Mark uses.  Also, these verses are not found in all the ancient manuscripts.  They are referred to collectively as “the long ending”, to distinguish this ending from the incomplete ending we do find in all the manuscripts for this Gospel.  There is also a “short ending” which consists of a verse or less.  Despite the lack of Mark’s authorship, the Church has always recognized the antiquity of these verses and that they result from divine inspiration, and so they are considered an authentic part of this Gospel.  Mark does seem to end his Gospel in an awkward way.  The last words he wrote were, “And they said nothing to any man: for they were afraid” (Mark 16, 8).  This refers to the women who went to the tomb of Jesus.  We know from the aorist tense of the verb “they said” and from the testimony of the other Gospels that they did not speak to anyone until they arrived at the house used by the Apostles.  Yet, while the other Evangelists give us accounts of appearances of the risen Jesus, Mark does not.  The “long ending” was written as a way of providing a more rounded conclusion to the Gospel.  And it does this without adding anything we would not know from the other Gospels.

We see in this “long ending” the persistence of unbelief in the Lord’s Resurrection among his closest followers.  This comes from the rock-solid human understanding that in order for a person to come into this world, he or she must be conceived and born, and that all those born into the world must die, and that the dead do not return (except perhaps for brief visitations as ghosts).  This understanding might be said to be part of human hardwiring.  And so, when Mary Magdalene tells the other women and later the Apostles, that Jesus is alive, they will not believe her.  It was inconceivable to them that her claim could be true.  This, however, leads us to conclude that the Lord Jesus did rise from the dead.  If the Gospels had been written in a way that did not mention the doubts and refusals — not to say, the inability — to believe, the Resurrection accounts would sound like the endings of fairy tales and could not be taken seriously.  But here we have an account of real men and women who could not or would not believe the unbelievable, and then they did.  This would be similar to believing that the sea had turned back on itself in mid course, or that mountains had leapt like rams (cf. Psalm 114, 3-4).  We would say today that the Resurrection could not have happened because it contradicts science.

Mary Magdalene and her companions and the Apostles and other disciples were not gullible peasants who believed everything they were told.  They were practical people of hard experience who wanted solid proof of extraordinary claims.  The Risen Lord himself met their demands for proof, eating ordinary food in their sight, allowing them to touch him, and even reasoning with them from the Scriptures that his rising must be true.  The greatest proof of the Lord’s triumph over death was his triumph over the doubts and convictions of those to whom he appeared.  It was not easy for them to believe, but once they did, they taught the truth at the cost of their lives and in the face of the doubt and ridicule of the world.  

The Lord Jesus paid with his life the price for our belief in him as God, and it cost the lives of those who knew him to pass on this Good News.  It costs something for us to believe as well, but how well do we believe?  Do we do our part in passing on this Good News as the Lord wants us to do?

 Easter Friday, April 25, 2025

The Feast of St. Mark

Mark 16, 15-20

Jesus appeared to the Eleven and said to them: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”  Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.

St. Mark was the son of a woman named Mary who owned a large house in Jerusalem.  Since his mother is spoken of and her name given, the absence of any mention of his father leaves us to suspect that he was not alive by the time of the Lord’s last year of public ministry, at the latest.  During that time Mark would seem to have been young and not married, for we find later that he went off with the unmarried St. Barnabas and St. Paul to preach the Gospel in faraway lands.  His later break with St. Paul seems to have been caused by an urgent need to return to Jerusalem.  This may have come as the result of the death of his mother, who left him the house and other property.  While it is easy to take the side of St. Paul on this issue, Mark’s mother’s house was an important meeting place for the Christians of Jerusalem, and it probably served as a church for them as well.  Securing his rights as heir so that the house might continue to be used for this purpose would have made a compelling reason to return to the city.  St. Paul must have come around to this conclusion because we find him and Mark reconciled later on.  It is very possible that Mark became associated with St. Peter at his time.  Peter had made forays into foreign lands, such as to the Syrian city of Antioch, to preach the Gospel but regularly returned two Jerusalem before embarking a new expedition to preach the Gospel.  He may have been mindful of the Lord’s return in glory, which was thought for a long time to take place at Jerusalem or at the Valley of Jehoshaphat situated in the Judean wilderness, eleven miles of Jerusalem): “Let the nations come up into the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there I will sit to judge all nations round about” (Joel 3, 12).  Between the years 42 and 50, Peter made up his mind to go to Rome, and he took Mark, a seasoned proclaimer of the Gospel, with him.  St. Irenaeus (d. 206 A.D.) calls Mark “the interpreter and follower of Peter” which leads us to think that his Greek, if not his Latin, surpassed that of Peter, and to preach to the Romans would have required a fair ability in either language.  That may be so in terms of the spoken language, but his Gospel, written in Greek, is notable for its rough style.  It is clearly written by someone more comfortable In Aramaic or Hebrew than in Greek.  

According to Bishop Papias (d. 130 A.D.), whom the early Church historian Eusebius quotes, Mark wrote his Gospel at the request of the Roman Christians who desired a written record of St. Peter’s memories of the Lord Jesus.  Mark does this principally regarding the acts of the Lord, as Peter remembered them.  Mark tells the story of the very first part of the Lord Jesus’s public ministry’s beginning with his Baptism, then quickly moves through some of the early miracles and the calls of the first Apostles.  Much of his Gospel is devoted to the last journey of the Lord to Jerusalem, and his subsequent arrest, and Passion and Death.  His Gospel, as we now have it, tells us very little about the Resurrection of the Lord.  What we do have from him seems rushed and unfinished.  This may mean that he died before completing his Gospel, or that he suddenly had to travel and did not resume its composition.  Mostly it is thought that he finished his Gospel before Peter died and that Peter read it and neither praised nor condemned it, but let it be read by the people.  We might also conjecture that the people asked Mark to write the Gospel after Peter’s martyrdom in order to preserve his memories of the Lord.  

The Egyptian Christians have a firm tradition that Mark came to Alexandria from Rome and there are those who say he wrote his Gospel there.  By the time Mark arrived, the Holy Faith had already been introduced to the city and was spreading.  The Christians there, called the Copts, hold that St. Mark taught their ancestors how to celebrate the Mass, which was called “the Liturgy”.  This “Liturgy of St. Mark” is said to be the original Divine Liturgy of the Coptic Church In Egypt.  By the 500’s, however, the Copts composed liturgies in their own language (that of St. Mark being in Greek) and it fell into disuse, although it is still celebrated in certain places at certain times in the Church calendar.

St. Mark did not long survive his masters, St. Peter and St. Paul, and died in Alexandria in the year 68, dragged by a rope through the streets of that city by the pagans until he was dead.  His remains are said to be enshrined in Venice at the wonderful basilica.

The Church calls him an “evangelist”, from a Greek word meaning a messenger or herald of (usually good) tidings, especially regarding royal marriages, coronations, and battlefield victories. St. Mark is best known as the author of a Gospel, and you and I are also called to be evangelists, though we will never write Gospels.  We witness the Gospel that we have received.  We live out the good tidings we have heard.  We preach with word and deed that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Easter Thursday, April 24, 2025

Luke 24, 35–48

The disciples of Jesus recounted what had taken place along the way, and how they had come to recognize him 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.” 

“While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst.” In St. Luke’s telling of the Resurrection, the Lord Jesus first appears to the Apostles together after he had appeared to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus.  He appears as these two disciples are describing his original appearance to them, as though to confirm their account.  He says to them all, “Peace be with you”, that is, Shalom.  While this was a standard greeting among the Jews, the Lord truly means for them to be at peace as well.  His appearance here and the use of the greeting mirror Luke’s telling of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary at the very beginning of his Gospel.  The appearance is sudden and completely unexpected.  Instead of an angel, it is the Lord himself.  The greeting he gives them, Shalom, would have been the Hebrew greeting the angel gave to Mary, but which Luke rendered in the typical Greek idiom.  His greeting to them was no mere formality, but an exhortation or even an order.  And yet, “they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”  Now, the disciples who were going to Emmaus had told them how “they had come to recognize him in the breaking of bread”, but this has barely prepared them for the risen Jesus.  Thus, although the women disciples had told the Apostles what they had witnessed, and Jesus had appeared already to Peter, and now the two disciples had told them of their extensive encounter with him, the Apostles react in this way, and this on top of the fact that the Lord had spoken several times to them about his rising after his crucifixion and Death. Luke assembles these facts and reactions with an eye to the major objection the Greeks had to believing in the Lord: that he rose from the dead.  Luke himself would write of St. Paul’s address introducing the Lord in Athens that all went well until he mentioned this, at which point the Athenians shook their heads, got up, and left: “And when they had heard of the resurrection of the dead, some indeed mocked” (Acts 17, 32).  These Athenians were Epicureans and Stoics, followers of two philosophical schools of thought the founders of which were men of great intellect and renown, and whose writings relied on logical argument.  By emphasizing the initial disbelief of the Lord’s own followers, Luke shows that sympathizes with the objection of the Greeks, as a Greek himself, and so persuades them to continue reading.  

The Lord treats their fear calmly, without remonstration, and proceeds to show them in a very matter-of-fact way that he has indeed risen bodily: on the one hand, he is not the ghost that these superstitious Jewish people (as the Greeks thought of them) took him for; and on the other, he represents some entirely new reality, worthy of intellectual inquiry: “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.”  Establishing his physical presence among them by this demonstration, he reasons with them calmly: “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.”  The Greeks would have approved of this procedure and they would have felt curious to understand this phenomenon.  At the end of his opening the Scriptures to the Apostles together, the Lord tells them that the “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”  The Greeks now hear of the reason for why people like Paul are among them, preaching.  What the Apostles believe is not exactly a philosophy, nor it is exactly a foreign cult, like that of Isis, popular at the time.  Rather, it is a reasonable belief system rooted in recent historical events and preached by those who witnessed the miracles and words of the One around whom it was centered, Jesus Christ.  Indeed, Luke records the Lord saying to his followers on this occasion, “You are witnesses of these things.”  These words remind his followers of the reality of what they had seen and heard and of their obligation to render testimony, and are meant for the Greeks to hear as well, that the ones preaching to them are authentic and authorized.  They are, indeed, “sent”.  This accounts for the presence of the Apostles in their cities as well as for their zeal, which is not motivated by any desire for personal gain but for the love of their Redeemer, whom they had known themselves.

We have the words of these witnesses in the Gospels, the Letters, and the other writings collected into what came to be called the New Testament, and we have the writings of those who knew these original witnesses, men like Luke and Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Rome.  We too are witnesses of the Lord’s teachings, his miracles, his Death and Resurrection, and we too have a responsibility and the glory of bringing the Lord before the nations of our own day, in ways they can understand.

Easter Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Luke 24, 13–35

That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?” And he replied to them, “What sort of things?” They said to him, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his Body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see.” And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the Eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

The Lord appeared on several occasions to his followers after his Resurrection.  He did not appear to any who had not followed him.  He did not appear to the chief priests or to the Pharisees.  He did not go where he would not be welcome.  Each time he did appear, he did so for a particular purpose.  He appeared to Mary Magdalene to comfort her in her enormous grief over his Death, and to make her the messenger to the Apostles who were hiding from the Jews rather than gathered at his tomb as they should have been.  He later appeared to the Apostles on Easter Sunday in order to confirm the word of Mary Magdalene and also to begin preparing them to preach the Gospel.  In the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, we see the Lord appearing to two disciples who were traveling from Jerusalem after the Passover to the nearby town of Emmaus.  He spends several hours with these two men, explaining the Scriptures to them.  We might wonder why the Lord does this when, if his purpose was to reveal to them that he had risen, he had not simply appeared to them and announced himself to them if they failed to recognize him.  But these two men had already heard that he had risen.  The Lord’s purpose here was to teach them “what referred to him in all the Scriptures” so that they could teach others.  

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”  Their hearts burned with their desire to understand and with their growing faith.  They heard the Lord, the Author of the Scriptures, go point by point, presenting the whole drama of salvation to them from the fall in the Garden through Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, and the Prophets.  Suddenly they saw how it all foretold the Son of God coming amongst them, and his Death and Resurrection.  Now they understood and they burned to preach and teach others.  Still without their recognizing him, he “broke bread” with them.  This ancient idiom means very broadly “to eat”, particularly at a meal with others, but for Christians these words evoke the Last Supper and the Mass, and the words of the Lord: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world” (John 6, 51-52).  Making this final connection for themselves, they finally recognized him with them.  And then, having accomplished his purpose, the Lord left them.

Let us pray so that through his grace, our hearts may burn for him as we ponder the words of the Holy Scripture and worship him at Holy Mass.

Easter Tuesday, April 22, 2025

John 20, 11–18

Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the Body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She thought it was the gardener and said to him, “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher. Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and then reported what he had told her.

The details St. John gives us of the Lord’s tomb are absolutely consistent with the archaeological evidence of the tombs of wealthy Jewish families of that time period.  Here, for instance, John speaks of the two angels “sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the Body of Jesus had been.”  Inside the tomb complex, niches would have lined the walls where the bodies of the deceased would be placed.  A bench carved out of the stone would have served to set the body of the deceased so that it could be properly prepared for entombment with various oils and spices, as well as the careful wrapping of the linen cloths around the body.  The fact that Mary Magdalene and the Apostles had to “bend down” to see inside the tomb is also consistent with the evidence, for the entrances to these tombs were low, certainly not the height of the average person.

“Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there.”  Neither Peter nor John had seen angels.  They saw the burial cloths, and then left, presumably to return to the house where they had been staying in order to tell the other Apostles.  But Mary stayed, as though now she had nowhere else to go.  And indeed, she wept both for her Master’s Death and for his missing Body.

“Woman, why are you weeping?”  The angels, of course, know why she weeps.  They ask her this question not for their benefit but for ours.  “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.”  She does not seem surprised at their appearance, nor does she demand to know who they were.  All she can think of in her grief is her Lord.  “When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there.”  Now, she was not in the tomb, but she was bent over looking into it.  Perhaps she heard a noise behind her, or she had an intuition of another’s presence.  At any rate, she turned around.  Possibly she glanced back first, then seeing that a man was standing several feet away she stood up and turned to face him fully.  “But did not know it was Jesus.”  Neither would the disciples going to Emmaus recognize him, nor the Apostles when they later went fishing.  This has been explained as that the Risen Lord’s Body was now glorified, but it may be too that it was so fixed in their minds that Jesus had died that even face to face with him, they did not know it was him.  This difficulty in knowing him makes the fact of his having risen even more convincing, and more astounding.

“Woman, why are you weeping?”  Jesus repeats the question the angels had posed.  Perhaps after a pause, the Lord asked a very revealing question: “Whom are you looking for?”  There was no hint in Mary’s conduct that she was “looking” for anyone.  She was a woman mourning at a place of burial, to anyone who saw her.  But this is a question that brought Mary’s response, because she in fact was looking for Someone.  “She thought it was the gardener.”  This gives us some indication of how the Lord appeared to her, that he seemed very ordinary, a working man in his working clothes.  “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.”  In this interesting sentence, Mary addresses the man she took for a gardener as Kyrie, that is, “Lord”.  The word could also mean “sir” or “master”, but this was how Mary customarily had addressed Jesus.  It is an odd choice of word to address a gardener.  “And I will take him.”  The Greek word here translated as “I will take” actually means “I will raise up”, or, “I will lift up.”  So, Mary saw a “gardener” who worked among the tomb complexes, and she suspected that somehow and for some unknown reason he had moved Christ’s Body; she addresses this gardener as “Lord”, and then proposes to raise up the Body of her Lord.  However, this was not a Lord of the dead but of the living, and he would one day raise up her body.

“Mary!”  This one word in this one place is perhaps the most moving moment in all the Scriptures.  A woman in the greatest distress, alone and heart-broken, and her name called by the One who was the love of her life, who was presenting himself to her as alive after all.  “She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni,’ which means Teacher.”  For Mary, Jesus was both Lord and Teacher.  Since John was evidently writing to Jewish Christians living in Judea, we might wonder why he feels the need to translate Hebrew or Aramaic words, but it is also clear from the fact that John quotes from the Septuagint as a matter of course that these Jewish Christians spoke Greek as their first language.  We ought to try to imagine Mary Magdalene at the moment she realized the truth.  She would have frozen suddenly at the sound of her name in the exact way the Lord had always pronounced it when speaking with her.  She would not have spoken at all for an instant.  She may have trembled in shock.  And then her face would be filled with powerful, new emotions.  

In the very next sentence, John relates, “Jesus said to her, ‘Stop holding on to me.’ ”  John does not tell us that Mary ran to him and threw her arms onto him.  John does not tell us how Mary held him.  Traditionally it is thought that she lay before him on the ground, embracing his feet, but it is not too much to think that in her rapture she held him in her arms without a thought to propriety.

“Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers.”  We do not know if this is all the Lord said to her.  His words certainly impress us as very matter-of-fact and void of emotion, but we should think of the Lord as telling her this with emotion in his voice, possibly even whispering.  Perhaps Mary never told anyone, not even John, what the Lord said to her on that early Sunday morning when the whole universe held its breath at the wondrous rising of its Maker.