INTRODUCTION
The common theme of today’s readings is the challenge to adjust our lives to the living presence of the risen Lord as we grow daily more aware of the presence of His Holy Spirit within us and surrounding us. This awareness should strengthen our hope in His promises, bring us to true repentance for our sins and the renewal of our lives, and lead us to bear witness to Christ by our works of charity. The readings also remind us that the purpose of the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Jesus was to save us from our sins. Our world needs healing, transformation and salvation. Jesus sends us today.
FIRST READING: Acts 3: 13-15, 17-19
Saint Luke wrote for an audience of cosmopolitan, middle-class Gentile converts, living in a skeptical society, yet committed to a religion with long, historic, Jewish roots. This new religion reached out to all humankind. To tell that story, to ground his audience in their adopted religious heritage, and to keep them focused on the new religion’s mission, Luke needed to show how the story of Jesus continued in His Church in a second book, the Acts of the Apostles. Today’s lesson is taken from the earlier part of the second of five discourses preached by Peter. This forceful address astonished the crowd gathered at the Portico of Solomon in the Jerusalem Temple after a healing miracle. In it, Peter speaks of the Jewish heritage of Christianity, reminding his hearers, and us, of how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sent His Son Jesus as the Messiah to save the world and of how His chosen people rejected their Messiah, manipulating the Romans to execute Jesus. Peter also reports how Jesus was raised from the dead and fulfilled all the Messianic prophecies. This portion of the sermon concludes with the admonition to the Jews, and a reminder to ourselves: “Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (Acts 3:19). Although we were not part of that crowd demanding Jesus’ death, it was our sins that Christ carried to the cross, and it was for those sins that Christ asked the Father’s forgiveness from the cross. Hence, we also need to reform our lives and turn to God with repentant hearts. Since we believe that Christ has forgiven our sins, we must forgive the sins of others.
SECOND READING: 1 John 2:1-5
In liturgical year Cycle B, we read from the First Letter of Saint John on the Sundays of Easter. This Letter was addressed to the early Christian community beset with many problems. Some members were advocating false doctrines. These errors are here recognized and rejected. Although their advocates had left the community, the threat they posed remained. They had refused to acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God who came into the world as a true man. They had been difficult people to deal with, claiming special knowledge of God but disregarding the Divine commandments, particularly that of love of neighbor. Likewise, they had refused to accept Faith in Christ as the source of sanctification. Thus, they denied the redemptive value of Jesus’ death.While neither today’s reading from Luke nor the reading from Acts explains how Jesus’ death and Resurrection frees us from sins, John in his letter provides an explanation, calling Jesus the “expiation for our sins.” This presupposes that the death of Jesus was a sacrifice, like the sacrifices prescribed in the Old Testament (Numbers 5:8). The sacrifice of Jesus makes up for sins, and so offers an opportunity for their forgiveness. Jesus continues to remain our advocate when we encounter the harsh reality of our sins in our lives. Hence, John advises true Christians to approach Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins and to lead true Christian lives by obeying his commandments.
GOSPEL: Luke 24:35-48
This apparition of Jesus took place on Easter evening, after Jesus had appeared to the two disciples of Emmaus who immediately hurriedly back to Jerusalem to report the glad news: they had met Jesus, alive! He had seemed to be stranger who had explained to them the Sacred Scriptures, but when he “broke the bread” they had recognized Jesus. The Emmaus disciples discovered that the apostles were already convinced of the resurrection of Jesus because Simon had seen him as well. While they were discussing these things in the still-locked Upper Room, Jesus appeared in their midst, shocking and terrifying them. Refuting the rumor that Jesus had not actually died on the cross but had been taken down and hidden by his friends, Luke shows that the risen Jesus could now suddenly and wondrously appear in their midst (v. 36).This story was told and retold and recorded by Luke for at least three reasons: (1) Jesus’ death and Resurrection fit God’s purpose as revealed in Scripture; (2) the risen Jesus is present in the breaking of bread; and (3) the risen Jesus is also physically absent from the disciples. (Fr. Anthony Kadavil).
The last lines of the pericope present the commissioning of the disciples for mission of preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins.This is Luke’s way of demonstrating the real meaning of the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ: He died to reconcile humanity with the Father.
LIFE MESSAGES
1) We need to relive the “Upper Room Experience” in the Holy Mass:
The same Jesus who, in the Upper Room, prepared his disciples for their preaching and witnessing mission, is present with us in the Eucharistic celebration. The Eucharistic gathering is the gathering of the disciples of Christ around the table of the Word and that of the Eucharist. In them we become what we receive so that we may be able to give to others what we have become. The message is “forgiveness”. We are called to be agents of peace and forgiveness in our world torn apart into fragments of hatred, crisis of all indices and varieties. Jesus sends us into world today as his witnesses starting from our families.
2) Our daily lives need to become the means of experiencing and sharing the risen Lord with others:
No one who truly receives Jesus in his/her life remains the same. The encounter with the risen Lord is a life transforming encounter. Just as the lives of disciples were transformed when they experienced their risen Lord in their community, let us learn to recognize the presence of Jesus in our own homes, social service centers, nursing facilities, workplaces, hospitals, and schools. These are also the places where we have the opportunity to touch lives, change stories, implant faith and make lasting impacts for the glory of God.
3) We need to become agents with Jesus in the establishing of the Kingdom in our world:
The early disciples lived the absence of the Master, a moment of crisis as a community, praying together, sharing their worries and comforting each other. This sense of communion was intensified and transformed into a liturgical community where the perpetual presence of Christ was felt and the life of each member given meaning. How many of us Christians truly live as a community of believers. Many of us do not have the good of our Christian community at heart. We ckme to Church but we do not contribute to the unity of our community. Jesus wants us to be a community which shares and in which everything is shared; a community which knows how to recognize Jesus in the poor, in the marginalized, and in the sick; a community to bring healing into people’s lives; and a community of peacemakers and not makers of division or conflict. It is a call. It is an obligation.
PRAYER
May your people exult forever, O God, in renewed youthfulness of spirit, so that rejoicing now in the restored glory of our adoption, we may look forward in confident hope to the rejoicing of the day of resurrection. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
PAX VOBIS!
