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Contemplating today's Gospel

Today's Gospel + homily (in 300 words)

Thursday in the Octave of Easter
View 1st Reading and Psalm
1st Reading (Acts 3:11-26): As the crippled man who had been cured clung to Peter and John, all the people hurried in amazement toward them in the portico called “Solomon's Portico”. When Peter saw this, he addressed the people: «You children of Israel, why are you amazed at this, and why do you look so intently at us as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus whom you handed over and denied in Pilate's presence, when he had decided to release him.

»You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong, and the faith that comes through it has given him this perfect health, in the presence of all of you. Now I know, brothers and sisters, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did; but God has thus brought to fulfillment what he had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer.

»Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment and send you the Christ already appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration of which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old. For Moses said: ‘A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen in all that he may say to you. Everyone who does not listen to that prophet will be cut off from the people’. Moreover, all the prophets who spoke, from Samuel and those afterwards, also announced these days. You are the children of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your ancestors when he said to Abraham: ‘In your offspring all the families of the earth shall be blessed’. For you first, God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning each of you from your evil ways».
Responsorial Psalm: 8
R/. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is your name over all the earth! What is man that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man that you should care for him?

You have made him little less than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him rule over the works of your hands, putting all things under his feet.

All sheep and oxen, yes, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, and whatever swims the paths of the seas.
Versicle before the Gospel (Ps 117:24): Alleluia. This is the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it. Alleluia.
Gospel text (Lk 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 Messiah 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.”

“Peace be with you.”

Fr. Joan Carles MONTSERRAT i Pulido (Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)

Today, the risen Christ meets His disciples again, with His desire of peace: “Peace be with you.” (Lk 24:36). This is how He makes the fears and forebodings the Apostles had accumulated during their days of passion and loneliness disappear.

He is not a ghost but totally real; at times, however, fright in our lives is taking shape as if it were the only reality possible. At times also, it is our lack of faith and of interior life which is changing things: fright becomes reality and Christ gradually vanishes from our life. The presence of Christ in our Christian life, instead, lightens up our existence, especially in those places no human explanation may account for. Saint Gregory of Nazianzen tells us: “We should be ashamed to dispense with the salutation of peace; salutation the Lord left with us when He was going to leave this world. Peace is a name and a substantial thing emanating from God, as the Apostle Paul said to the Philippians: ‘The peace of God’; and that it is from God is also shown when he tells the Ephesians: ‘He is our peace’.”

It is the resurrection of Christ which gives a meaning to all our mishaps and sufferings, which helps us to recover our peace of mind and calm us down in the darkness of our life. All other small lights we may find in our life are only meaningful under this Light.

In the Gospel we read: “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms had to be fulfilled... ”; and again we read “He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Lk 24:44-45), as He had already done with the disciples at Emmaus. The Lord also wants us to understand the meaning of the Scriptures for our life; He wants our poor heart to become a flaming heart, like His: with the explanation of the Scriptures and the chunk of bread, the Holy Eucharist. In other words: the Christian task is to see His story to become a story of salvation.

Thoughts on Today's Gospel

  • “O surpassing loving-kindness! Christ received nails in His undefiled hands and feet, and suffered anguish; while on me without pain or toil by the fellowship of His suffering He freely bestows salvation.” (Saint Cyril of Jerusalem)

  • “The content of Christian witness is not a theory but a message of salvation, a real event, rather a Person: it is the Risen Christ, the living and only Savior of all.” (Francis)

  • “In particular Jesus' redemptive death fulfils Isaiah's prophecy of the suffering Servant. Indeed Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God's suffering Servant. After his Resurrection he gave this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples at Emmaus, and then to the apostles.” (Catechism Of The Catholic Church, Nº 601)