Proclaim grace, healing, and justice

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today offer a opportunity to reflect on the impact of the Easter message on our daily experience of encountering Jesus and testifying to His Presence.

Proclaim with action

The testimony of Peter, described in the Acts of the Apostles, results in repentance and Baptism for many in Jerusalem.

* [2:38] Repent and be baptized: repentance is a positive concept, a change of mind and heart toward God reflected in the actual goodness of one’s life. It is in accord with the apostolic teaching derived from Jesus (Acts 2:42) and ultimately recorded in the four gospels. Luke presents baptism in Acts as the expected response to the apostolic preaching about Jesus and associates it with the conferring of the Spirit (Acts 1:5; 10:44–48; 11:16).

In the Gospel from John, Mary Magdalene becomes the proto-Apostle after her encounter with Jesus after the Resurrection.

* [20:11–18] This appearance to Mary is found only in John, but cf. Mt 28:8–10 and Mk 16:9–11.

Barbara Dilly finds there are three main themes in the lessons today that sum up Lent, Easter, and the days that follow in a coherent faith response. They are “repent, rejoice, and report.”

And now for the third response to God’s love that is expected of us.  Like Mary, we are to report what Jesus has told us. There is no need to weep!  We have not been abandoned! God is with us! Easter is indeed about sharing that good news with all the world.  We don’t have to go around reciting Bible verses to do that. It should be evident in the way we live our lives, that we are authentically real about our human shortcomings, but ever confident in our efforts to live loving good lives.

Don Schwager reminds us that the Risen Lord Jesus reveals himself to us as we listen to his Word.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the foundation of our hope - the hope that we, too, who believe in him will see the living God face to face and share in his everlasting glory and joy. "Without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy.  As the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls" (1 Peter 1:8-9). Do you recognize the Lord's presence with you, in his word, in the "breaking of the bread," and in his church, the body of Christ?

Friar Jude Winkler explores the continuation of the kerygma proclaimed by Peter and the connection to the Hebrew “shema” in the choice of words in the passage. The description of Mary Magdalene searching for Jesus body resonates with the search for the Lover in the Song of Songs, Friar Jude notes.

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, quotes Saint Irenaeus of Lyon and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as he reflects on how Christianity has been negatively and uselessly trapped in guilt about being “flesh,” while the great messages of the Gospel—grace, healing, and restorative justice—have largely gone unheeded.

We must begin by trusting what God has done in Jesus. We cannot return to a healthy view of our own bodies until we accept that God has forever made human flesh the privileged place of the divine encounter. We have had enough of dualism, enough of the separation of body and spirit, enough over-emphasis on the body’s excesses and addictions. We must reclaim the incarnation as the beginning point of the Christian experience of God. We are not followers of Plato, but must return to the Hebrew respect for this world and for all the wisdom and goodness of the body. The embodied self is the only self we have ever known. Our bodies are God’s dwelling place and even God’s temple (see 1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

The messages we proclaim to others about our relationship with Jesus will be transmitted by our body language even before we speak a word.

References


(n.d.). Acts, chapter 2 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved April 3, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/acts/2

(n.d.). John, chapter 20 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved April 3, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/20:1

(n.d.). Creighton University's Online Ministries. Retrieved April 3, 2018, from http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/online.html

(n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved April 3, 2018, from http://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/

(2017, December 30). 2018 Daily Meditations - Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved April 3, 2018, from https://cac.org/2018-daily-meditations/