The Solemnity of the Annunciation, Monday, April 8, 2024

Luke 1, 26–38

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.” Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

The Solemnity of the Annunciation is transferred to today.  It could not be celebrated during Holy Week, where it fell this year, or during the Octave of Easter,  This is the first day on which it can be celebrated.  Please note the article on the Mass after the reflection on the Gospel Reading.

At the end of the Akathist hymn of the Greeks, we hear, “Gabriel was rapt in amazement as he beheld your virginity and the splendor of your purity, O Mother of God, and he cried out to you: By what name shall I call you? I am bewildered; I am lost! I shall greet you as I was commanded to do: Hail, O Woman full of Grace!”  To glimpse something of the nature of the Conception of our Lord in the womb of the nVirgin Mary, we must resort to images such as that of the burning bush in Exodus 3, 2: “And the angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses] in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.”  It is a contradiction, a paradox, an impossibility, and yet it is.  

God joined himself to a human nature and so joined himself to us, that we might be joined to him.  For this reason, St. Thomas Aquinas calls the womb of the Virgin Mary the thalamus — the marriage chamber — of God and human nature.  And this is a fallen human nature that receives him as Spouse, reminding us of the commandment of God to marry the harlot: “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord.”  This prophetic act was meant to present to the Israelites a living picture of their own relationship with God.  Hosea went and did marry such a wife, and he loved her and they had a son.  But she returned to her harlotry and broke his heart.  We can see here the Son of God marrying our nature in order to draw it away from its inclination to sin, and so to draw us away from it as well. 

The Virgin Mary shows us how to respond to God’s love and his offer of union with our souls.  May we imitate her mind and her life in our obedience and faith.

Today we begin a series of short articles on the Holy Mass, and first of all we will consider what the Mass is.  For this, we will have to consider what various councils and doctrinal statements say because there seems no one place that gives a complete and concise definition.  This is the case probably because the Mass is so familiar to Catholics that when it was discussed certain of its characteristics were emphasized to the (near) exclusion of others.  For example, the Council of Trent primarily speaks of the Mass as the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ without bringing in that it is an act of worship; the glossary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers that it is a Eucharistic celebration (without explaining what that means) without mentioning its sacrificial nature.  Drawing from various sources we can say that the Holy Mass is the act of worship par excellence of the Catholic Church since within it the Church, through the priest, who is in the Person of Christ, continually offers up the Sacrifice of the Cross to God the Father.  Because Christ is present in the priest who makes the offering and because he is also the Victim that is offered, no other act of worship can surpass it or even approach it.  At its most central point, the priest, through the power of Christ, changes ordinary wheat-bread and wine mixed with water into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, offers these to the Father, and then consumes it, consummating the offering.  Catholics free from the contagion of mortal sin then may approach the altar to receive a share in the Sacrifice for their own benefit.  The priest, and those present in the congregation, offer the Sacrifice for the salvation of the world, the purpose for which the Lord offered himself on Golgotha, and for more personal goods, such as the recovery of a loved one from sickness or a member of the faithful departed.  Much more can be said about what the Mass is, but this is enough for a start.  All the articles that will follow will add to the understanding of what the Mass is.

Tomorrow: Why is the Mass called “the Mass”?

 The Second Sunday of Easter, April 7, 2024

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 nail-marks 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.

 Saturday in the Octave of Easter, April 6, 2024

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 final chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel contains two accounts of the Resurrection and the events that occurred after it.  The first part of these runs from verse 1 to verse 8, and seems to leave the reader hanging because it is evidently not complete: the women who come to the tomb of Jesus see an angel, hear the angel announce the Resurrection, and then flee without telling anyone.  The second part, which we have here as today’s Gospel Reading, is probably not by St. Mark.  It is certainly of great antiquity, though, since it was included in the earliest Latin translations of the Gospel, which were made before the year 100.  When St. Jerome came to produce the Vulgate Bible, he translated many biblical books from Greek and Hebrew, but took the old Latin translations of the Gospels and only made corrections in including them.  If we compare Mark 1-8 with 9-20, the latter provides more details than the former and does finish the Gospel in a satisfying way for the reader.  My thought is that the abrupt ending to the first part of the chapter signals that either the rest of the Gospel was lost (as though the final page of a book had been ripped out) or that Mark had been interrupted in his writing, possibly by the death of the source for his Gospel, St. Peter, and the subsequent persecution which may have caused him to leave Rome suddenly.  We can also recall that Mark would have written his Gospel on a scroll of papyrus, and it could have gotten torn towards the end.  I wonder if one of those early Christians who had heard the Gospel read out in the time after it had been written wrote out what he remembered when he later found that the end had been lost.  At any rate, the Church has always held this second part of the chapter to be divinely inspired and canonical.  

“When Jesus had risen, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene.”  This is a very sober, matter-of-fact statement of a staggering event.  It is also a very careful statement: the author does not elaborate or add anything that might be speculative on his part.  But how the pen of the author must have shaken as he wrote this!  He is writing of seeming impossibilities, of a man rising from the dead and appearing to a living woman as one who is also alive, again.  If only we could hear him speak this and see his expression as he does!  You and I have grown up with the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  This was not so for the early Christians.  The Resurrection was so incredible, in fact, that St. Paul learned to bring this in only gradually when speaking to the Gentiles about Jesus (cf. Acts 17, 32).

But the writer is emphatic about what happened and points to a specific witness, Mary Magdalene, “out of whom he had driven seven demons”.  He does not say merely, One of the women, nor, Mary, nor does he even halt at giving the name of the town from which she came; he tells of what Jesus had done for her.  It is as though he is pointing directly to her in a crowd.  He expects those for whom he is writing to know her or at least to know about her and the details of her story.

“She went and told his companions who were mourning and weeping.”  We are not told anywhere else that the Lord’s companions — his Apostles and disciples — were “mourning and weeping”.  John 20, 19 relates that the Apostles were hiding in a house “for fear of the Jews” following the Lord’s Passion and Death, leaving us to imagine that their primary reaction to his Death was of fear for themselves and only secondarily of grief for Jesus.  This detail in Mark helps us to see that the Apostles had gathered together in a house, almost certainly the one in which they had just eaten the Last Supper, in order to have a secure place in which to grieve and mourn.

“When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.”  This confirms what is found in Luke 24, 11: “And these words seemed to them as idle tales: and they did not believe them.”  This does not contradict the Gospel of John’s account in which Peter and John ran to the tomb and saw and believed, for the words in Mark are spoken in a general way.  That is, many of the Apostles and disciples failed to believe Mary Magdalene’s report, but not all.  We recall, for instance, how Thomas doubted the other Apostles when they told him that they had seen Jesus.

“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.”  This refers to the two disciples who walked to Emmaus, in Luke 24, 13-32.  Luke tells us that the Apostles did consider to be true the news from these two disciples, but he may also have been generalizing for many of the disciples had by then come to the house to find out what was actually happening, and they did not believe at first.

“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.”  This accords with Luke 24, 37-44, in which the Lord eats a piece of fish to show them that he is indeed alive.

“Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”  It might seem odd to hear the Lord reproaching the Apostles for their unbelief and then in the next verse to hear him commanding them to go out to the whole world to proclaim the Gospel, but what could be more convincing than testimony from those who had at first not believed and had to be convinced themselves?

We see in these verses a summary of the Lord’s appearances after he rose from the dead, and how various Apostles and disciples received the news.  We ought to try, each Easter, to forget everything we know about Jesus and to try to hear of the Resurrection for the first time.  We can refresh our faith in this way.  Faith ought to be fresh, as though we had just come to believe, for then it is stronger, more vibrant, and more zealous.

 Friday in the Octave of Easter, April 5, 2024

John 21, 1–14

Jesus revealed himself again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. He revealed himself in this way. Together were Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We also will come with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, have you caught anything to eat?” They answered him, “No.” So he said to them, “Cast the net over the right side of the boat and you will find something.” So they cast it, and were not able to pull it in because of the number of fish. So the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord.” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he tucked in his garment, for he was lightly clad, and jumped into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat, for they were not far from shore, only about a hundred yards, dragging the net with the fish. When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you just caught.” So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore full of one hundred fifty-three large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come, have breakfast.” And none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they realized it was the Lord. Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them, and in like manner the fish. This was now the third time Jesus was revealed to his disciples after being raised from the dead.

The Evangelists record several of the Lord’s appearances to the Apostles and to his other followers over the course of the forty days following his rising from the dead.  These appearances followed no pattern and could seemingly occur at any time at all.  In the appearance recorded by St. John used as the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, we see seven of the Apostles fishing.  The Lord had directed his Apostles to return to Galilee, and rather than each man returning to his own town, as Nathanael might go back to Cana, they remained together, probably at the house of St. Peter in Capernaum.  Here, we see seven of the Apostles go fishing.  They do not do this for sport or to pass the time, but in order to make money for themselves, just as St. Paul would continue his occupation of making tents in order to fund himself after his conversion to Christ.  At the same time, the other Apostles going with Peter that night to the seaside, where he kept his boat, is a sign of their unity under him.

“That night they caught nothing.”  That these skilled, veteran fishermen caught nothing at all was as much a miracle as the later bountiful catch, which came at the most unlikely hour.  And yet, all through the night they cast their heavy net and dragged it a bit, and then pulled it out of the water, empty, time and time again.  “When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.”  The inability of the Apostles and the Lord’s other disciples to recognize him when he appeared to them seems to indicate the powerful grip of human experience that told them that when a person died, they would never see him again.  We have all experienced something of the kind.  Once we have made up our minds that something is impossible, we struggle greatly to accept it when it actually occurs.  We even become unreasonable in looking for ways in which the thing is a fraud or how our senses have been tricked.  In the case of the Apostles, we see how hard it was even for them to believe that Jesus was risen, and this after he had already appeared to them on previous occasions.  This in turn tells us how great is the gift of faith for us to believe in the Resurrection of the Lord.

“So they cast it, and were not able to pull it in because of the number of fish.”  All through the dark night of this life following the sin of our first parents, we strove to help ourselves, to solve our unsolvable problem, to save ourselves from death and hell.  But we could not, despite our best and most prolonged efforts.  It is the horror of the human predicament before the coming of Christ: our imminent destruction and our inability to save ourselves.  This is true historically and also personally, for the one who does not know Christ.  But with the arrival of Christ and in cooperation with the direction and grace he offers — or, our obedience to him — we are saved.  And not “merely” saved, but abundantly saved.  John is specific: one hundred and fifty-three large fish.  The profit from this catch would see them through for some time.  But the number, signifying the Lord’s abundance, also shows how their preaching the Gospel will be effective through the Lord’s grace.  There will indeed by dark times of hard labor, evidently fruitless, for them and those who carry on their work after them, but this is only to remind us that the work is not ours as though its success depended entirely upon our skills.  It is the work of the Lord, which he deigns to share with us.  

John’s statement that 153 large fish were caught intrigued the Church Fathers and later commentators, and this has resulted in various speculations, but no one has produced a very persuasive explanation for it, unless the number is simply the number of fish that were caught.  Perhaps John himself counted them, and the number intrigued him as well.

 Thursday within the Octave of Easter, April 4, 2024

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.” 

Beginning Monday, April 8, I will in addition to the Scripture reflections, I will post short articles on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, going through the Mass part by part and explaining significance, meaning, and history.  If you have ever wondered what the Mass originally looked like, or about when was the Gloria added to the Mass and by whom, or where does the word “Mass” come from, you will find your answers here.  As always, I encourage anyone with questions or comments to email me or leave comments.  I’ll be happy to answer them.

“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.

Wednesday in the Octave of Easter, April 3, 2024

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 1, 2024

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.