As part of our pastor’s Palm Sunday homily he had a 95 year old member of our parish who is a World War II veteran tell about the celebrations when armistice was declared at the end of the war. His point was to give us a picture of the joyful mood in Jerusalem was like when Jesus entered the city. Eyewitnesses to such events carry a joy with them forever when they talk about it.
As I read today’s readings and those of this whole octave of Easter week, I am aware that I am having to work a bit to put myself emotionally into the Gospel and Acts narratives. I can read them—in fact I love all these stories. But, well, I’m kind of churched out. I want to rest. It’s Easter break. I need some of the eyewitness joy.
Eyewitness Joy
Yet this afternoon I will travel to another city for a mental health conference where I will see many of my old humanist friends. I will stay in the home of two of my dearest ones—and they are without faith.
I have a great need to be filled with the Joy of the Gospel—the Joy of Easter, with the enthusiasm of an eyewitness.
Today’s Gospel ends with Luke’s version of the Great Commission. “And Jesus 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 to these things.’”
What does it mean to me, here and now, “to be a witness to these things”? How do I get the spirit of great celebration and the vision of life-change, then go to all the world that Jesus imparted to his disciples on Easter Sunday night in this reading? How do I get the energy of the disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus?
Being in Jerusalem as disciples returned from their Emmaus journey
Today’s Gospel is a continuation of yesterdays. Yesterday we had the wonderful story of the road to Emmaus when Jesus walked along with two of his disciples. Their hearts burned as he opened up for them the Hebrew scriptures that told of the coming Messiah. They burst with joy as they immediately turned around to return to Jerusalem, once they had recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. When they reached Jerusalem they discovered that Jesus had also been seen by Simon and others among his followers.
I try to put myself in the disciples’ place. I try to enter their story. But I have believed in the resurrection since early childhood. I have experienced the risen Christ many, many times in Eucharist, in prayer, in God’s Providence. That dulls my eyewitness excitement.
I’ve been profiting this week from others’ meditations. Today I am asking the same thing Joe LaCombe did on Sunday: How do I rise up? With Daniel McFeely on Monday, I recognize the great need for me, for all those who know the Joy of the Gospel, to recognize that stones within and without need to be rolled away for Christ’s resurrection to permeate us. With Bob Garvey on Tuesday I recognize I need the gift of the Holy Spirit to FILL ME UP and set me free.
John, the Quiet for the Moment Witness
Somehow, this week, I find that easiest to do by being John—the one who went with Peter to the tomb on Sunday, but didn’t go in at first, the one we see as the “disciple whom Jesus loved” and the resource author of the Gospel of John, three letters in the New Testament, and Revelation.
While John says plenty in what he wrote and/or told to others through the years, he doesn’t speak here. He witnesses events and believes. He holds them in his heart until they can travel down to the core of his soul. That fits for me this week. I can be John today.
John was there in today’s reading from Acts. It, too, is a continuation of yesterday’s story—the story of when Peter discovers that he can heal—and evangelize through that healing—just like Jesus did. As the crippled man clung to Peter and to John and the people watched, Peter says,
“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, the 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.”
What was John feeling and thinking while Peter was talking? You will see as this story continues on Friday and Saturday in the first readings, John was quickly caught up in the excitement, controversy, and conversions that came from this lame man who clung to Peter and John and HAD NO TROUBLE proclaiming the Gospel. He was healed. It was a miracle.
Letting the Resurrection Sink Into Me
Doubts about the resurrection can (and have) entered my mind—but resurrection has always been a part of my culture, my consciousness. Admittedly, in times past, it was like it is so prevalent in our culture—everybody goes to heaven, everybody has an eternal life of peace—even if there has been no faith in God.
I was reminded earlier this week that Saint Pope John Paul II said, “The greatest sin of the twentieth century is the loss of belief in the reality of sin.”
How do I do that when I am so surrounded by the presence of violence, selfishness, greed, anger, etc? How am I immune to the realities of the greatness of what happened on Good Friday and Easter Sunday?
Jesus, Son of God who was both God and man, CHOSE to come to both satisfy a need for justice for evil, including the evil I have done, to show us how to live differently, and, by rising from the dead, to be present with us as we transform the world.
People today HEAL PEOPLE, just like Peter did by the Beautiful Gate. People respond to witnesses of changed lives, just as in Jerusalem in the days following the Jesus’ Resurrection. People respond to the words of witnesses, preachers, and writers, just as the responded to who John passed on.
Prayer: Lord, help me move from quiet witness to joyful one, as John did.
Lord, help me FULLY live these words from paragraph 24 of Evangelium Gaudium by Pope Francis:
The Church which “goes forth” is a community of missionary disciples who take the first step, who are involved and supportive, who bear fruit and rejoice. An evangelizing community knows that the Lord has taken the initiative, he has loved us first (cf. 1 Jn 4:19), and therefore we can move forward, boldly take the initiative, go out to others, seek those who have fallen away, stand at the crossroads and welcome the outcast. Such a community has an endless desire to show mercy, the fruit of its own experience of the power of the Father’s infinite mercy. Let us try a little harder to take the first step and to become involved. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. The Lord gets involved and he involves his own, as he kneels to wash their feet. He tells his disciples: “You will be blessed if you do this” (Jn 13:17). An evangelizing community gets involved by word and deed in people’s daily lives; it bridges distances, it is willing to abase itself if necessary, and it embraces human life, touching the suffering flesh of Christ in others. Evangelizers thus take on the “smell of the sheep” and the sheep are willing to hear their voice. An evangelizing community is also supportive, standing by people at every step of the way, no matter how difficult or lengthy this may prove to be. It is familiar with patient expectation and apostolic endurance. Evangelization consists mostly of patience and disregard for constraints of time. Faithful to the Lord’s gift, it also bears fruit. An evangelizing community is always concerned with fruit, because the Lord wants her to be fruitful. It cares for the grain and does not grow impatient at the weeds. The sower, when he sees weeds sprouting among the grain does not grumble or overreact. He or she finds a way to let the word take flesh in a particular situation and bear fruits of new life, however imperfect or incomplete these may appear. The disciple is ready to put his or her whole life on the line, even to accepting martyrdom, in bearing witness to Jesus Christ, yet the goal is not to make enemies but to see God’s word accepted and its capacity for liberation and renewal revealed. Finally an evangelizing community is filled with joy; it knows how to rejoice always. It celebrates every small victory, every step forward in the work of evangelization. Evangelization with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy, as part of our daily concern to spread goodness. The Church evangelizes and is herself evangelized through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelization and the source of her renewed self-giving.
