Day: April 6, 2018

Thought for the Day – 6 April – Easter Friday the Sixth day in the Easter Octave

“When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish lying on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.”…John 21:9-14

“Today …. is bathed in the luminous joy of Easter.   In these days, in fact, the Church celebrates the mystery of the Resurrection and experiences the great joy that comes to her from the Good News of Christ’s victory over evil and over death.   This joy is not only prolonged in the Octave of Easter but is extended for 50 days until Pentecost.

Christ’s Pasch is the supreme and unequalled act of God’s power.   It is an absolutely extraordinary event, the most beautiful, ripe fruit of the “Mystery of God”.   It is so extraordinary that it is ineffable in its dimensions that escape our human capacity for knowing and investigating.   Yet, it is also a “historical” event, witnessed to and documented.   It is the event on which the whole of our faith is founded.   It is the central content in which we believe and the main reason why we believe.

There is a glorified Resurrected Saviour now seated at the right hand of the Father, holding the place He has prepared for each of us.   His wounds are glorified now, beautiful, streaming the light of grace upon an earth being reborn, revealing the depth of His love and the Hope that springs eternal.   Through taking on our very humanity, He did for us what we could never have done for ourselves.   He “who knew no sin” walked in the perfect obedience of the Son and bridged the gap between the Father and the sons and daughters who had rejected His invitation to communion, through the offering of His own Body on the altar of the Cross.

Through His passion, obedience unto death, and Resurrection, He welcomed us into the very inner life of the Trinity.   In Him we now make our home in God.   In His sacred humanity He transforms the entire human experience.   He invites us to live differently and shows us the path to a fullness of life now and eternal glory in the new world to come.   He opened eternity to all who were bound by the chains of time.   He clothed in glorious freedom those once wrapped in the grave clothes of death.   He gave purpose to the sheep who had wandered aimlessly in empty self pursuits.

The whole world, created through Him, is now re-created in Him.   We can see our lives differently as we open ourselves to His Spirit and allow Him to replace our finite vision with the eyes of eternal perspective.   Our feet are now shod with the hope of the Good News.   His redemptive mission continues through us to a world waiting to be born anew. He walks through time in His Body on earth, His church;  the world reconciled and invites all men and women to follow Him.”

Pope Benedict XVI

Faith helps us recognise that Christ is God;  it shows that He is our saviour;  it brings us to identify ourselves with Him and to act as He acted.   When the risen Christ frees the apostle Thomas from his doubts, showing him His wounds, Jesus exclaims:  “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.”   And St Gregory the Great comments that “He is referring in particular to us, for we possess spiritually Him whom we have not seen in the body.”  He is referring to us, provided our behaviour agrees with our faith.   A person does not truly believe unless he puts into practice what he believes.   That is why St Paul says of those whose faith is limited to words:   “They profess recognition of God, but in their behaviour they deny him”

St Josemaria Escrivá (1902-1975)

(Christ is Passing By)