ASSURANCE OF OUR RESURRECTION

SUNDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTERTIDE   

Acts 2:14,22-33; Ps 16:1-2,5,7-11; 1 Pet 1:17-21; Lk 24:13-35

Renewing Our Spiritual Youthfulness in Christ

Our Easter celebration ought to renew our spiritual youthfulness, for it is when the Church puts these paschal mysteries before us anew. The mysteries themselves are ever new, for they contain eternal truths and goods which they make available to us through the Church’s liturgical celebrations. They are the mysteries of Jesus Christ, who has entered his eternal glory through his resurrection from the dead. By these mysteries that he entrusted to the Church to hold and celebrate for all ages to come, he makes her fruitful and renews her in the Holy Spirit. The mysteries are old in the passage of time and in their symbols, but remain new in their contents, which are ageless. We see the fruitfulness which Christ endows his Church in the number of her children baptised and joined the ranks of the faithful during Easter. The celebration also gave us, the old members, an opportunity to renew our baptismal consecration to God. The renewal is effective to the extent we are able to regrasp these divine truths given to us in the paschal celebrations in a new and deeper way than before. For just as advancement in age makes us wise in things of this world, by our accumulation of more experience in life, and a better knowledge of things of this world; in the same way, we are supposed to advance in spiritual wisdom and knowledge with passage of time, with deeper insight into spiritual reality and greater experience of them in prayer and meditations.

The mysteries are eternal and divine gifts, for they are beyond everything the senses can offer. The resurrection of the Son of Man is the chief of these mysteries, which causes our spiritual birth. Saint Peter’s speech on the day of Pentecost echoes with this deep conviction. He presented the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the last and greatest commendation of the Son of Man to the people of Israel first, but now, also to the whole world, for it is something never heard of in the whole world and through all ages. “Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God by the miracles and portents and signs that God worked through him when he was among you, as you all know. This man, who was put into your power by the deliberate intention and foreknowledge of God, you took and had crucified by men outside the Law. You killed him, but God raised him to life, freeing him from the pangs of Hades.” The people did not see the Risen Lord, but they saw the effect of his resurrection in the disciples through their manifestation of the presence of the Gift. They could not see the Risen Lord because they lacked faith and, therefore, could not receive his divine gift to the disciples. What proves his resurrection to them is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit among the disciples. “Now raised to the heights by God’s right hand, he has received from the Father the Holy Spirit, who was promised, and what you see and hear is the outpouring of that Spirit.” He gave the world the divine gift he received.

The gift of his divine gift to all shows that the human nature he took from us has entered the glory of God. We mean by this that our human nature is now united with God, not just on the side of God, but also on the side of man. Hence, what he received as a gift at the moment of his conception, he has now merited for us by his faithful obedience unto death. He did not merit it for himself, for he had it as a gift, but for all in the same human nature who would believe in his name, now divinised. He received the gift of beatific vision at the moment of conception in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, establishing a covenant between him and God. The ratification had to be accomplished through the complete obedience of the Son of Man to God’s will. The death of the Son of Man on the Cross was the ratification, making the gift of divinity to human nature permanent and eternal. This is the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Divinity is now permanently housed in human nature, therefore accessible to all who believe in the name of Jesus Christ.

Access to the divine stronghold or kingdom of God within us is faith in Jesus Christ. The profession of faith in the name of Jesus Christ admits all peoples and nations into the House of God built by the Son of Man. The ritual of baptism initiates us into the covenant, a journey of consecration of self to the Risen Lord. We begin to pattern our life and death on his. Saint Peter warns us to be circumspect on the type of life we are living; to make sure we model our lives on his, since he purchased us for God with his precious blood. “Remember, the ransom that was paid to free you from the useless way of life your ancestors handed down was not paid in anything corruptible, neither in silver nor gold, but in the precious blood of a lamb without spot or stain, namely Christ.” The resurrection of Jesus Christ is for our sake and for our glory. It is a gift enabling us to enter into the same glory that Christ received by his faithful service of God’s will.

The glory is not just promised but received already within our human nature, waiting for the ratification of our covenant with God in his blood, with our own complete submission till death. The two disciples were about to exclude themselves by their lack of faith. Thus, Jesus encounters them to call them back to the path. At the celebration of the covenantal meal, their eyes were opened again to the mystery. “Now while he was with them at table, he took the bread and said the blessing; then he broke it and handed it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognised him; but he had vanished from their sight.” His disappearance was an invitation to them and to us to walk by faith into the mysteries.

Let us pray: May your people exult for ever, 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 our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.