Daily Gospel Reflection: Thursday in the Octave of Easter
Bishop Robert Barron
Thursday in the Octave of Easter
April 4, 2024
Gospel: 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 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.”
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, the risen Jesus appears to his eleven disciples. That the Resurrection is a literary device, or a symbol that Jesus’ cause goes on, is a fantasy born in the faculty lounges of Western universities over the past couple of centuries. The still-startling claim of the first witnesses is that Jesus rose bodily from death, presenting himself to his disciples to be seen, even handled.
It is a contemporary prejudice that ancient people were naïve, easily duped, willing to believe any far-fetched tale—but this is simply not the case. They knew about visions, hallucinations, dreams, and even claims to ghostly hauntings.
In fact, in St. Luke’s telling, when the risen Lord appeared to his disciples in the upper room, their initial reaction was that they were seeing a specter. But Jesus himself moved quickly to allay such suspicions: “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.”
While they were, in Luke’s words, “still incredulous for joy and were amazed,” the risen Jesus asked if there was anything to eat and then consumed baked fish in their presence. This has nothing to do with fantasies, abstractions, or velleities, but rather with resurrection at every level.
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