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15 apr 2018
15/04/2018  3rd Sunday of Easter - B 

15/04/2018  3rd Sunday of Easter - B 

Reading 1, Acts 3,13-15.17-19 * Psalm 4 * Reading 2, First John 2,1-5 * Gospel, Luke 24,35-48

 

Why did Jesus die and why has He risen from the dead? Not only this question is fair, but also it must be asked! Today’s Word gives us the answer we were looking for!

The passage from the Gospel tells us about an apparition of Jesus’ to His disciples, afraid and amazed. First of all, He needs to convince them that they are not hallucinating: this is why He asks for something to eat, and He eats it in front of them! After reminding them of the Scriptures, He finally answers our question: He has died and risen from the dead to make sure that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all nations”! This, as a matter of fact, is the most truthful need of every single person and of all humankind. When Adam had rejected the Word of God, he was driven far from Him, and therefore he lost the happiness and his own satisfaction. And the distance from God is the sin! Every suffering and injustice oppressing men come exactly from sin.

Every man needs to go back, to repent and to get forgiveness, and instead they are constantly tempted to get far from the Father, to live in solitude, and therefore they do not have any hope in the future, above all about the future that will follow death. Jesus, rising from the dead, can reassure us that God intends and wants to forgive us, to bring us back to Him, to give us back our dignity of children of His! The Apostles understood that and preached it in every possible way, with gentle words and severe exhortations, just like Peter did in front of the crowd, astonished by the recovery of the cripple man. He was not afraid to say: “You killed the prince of life. … Now you must repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out”! Sins can be wiped out. The distance from God – this is what sin is about – can be reduced to zero. Whoever welcomes Jesus, the Son sent by the Father, as a matter of fact welcomes the gift from God, cheering the sender up. Whoever welcomes Jesus, then, finds himself to be not far any more, but within the Father’s heart. Jesus has died in order for our eye to be caught by Him, and He has risen from the dead in order to guarantee that He is really the one coming from the Father. We, even knowing that Jesus has risen from the dead, and even loving Him as the Living, continue to look at Him on the cross, to adore Him at the very moment of His death. Death and resurrection are the two sides of the same mystery of our salvation.

Those who had been baptized, made experience of the forgiveness: from the extraneousness of God they entered His life. Who has been baptized when he was a child is not aware of the change happened through the baptism, because since the beginning he started living in grace and in the intimacy with the Father through Jesus’ friendship. Both those who have been baptized when they were children and those that have been baptized at young age and in their adulthood, living in the world, are sieged by temptations, pushed to behave like the people of the world. We are tempted, like Peter in the court of Caiaphas, to blend with the guards of the enemy or just those indifferent of Him, in order to warm ourselves up near to their fire! Sometimes we too, like Peter, willingly forget to be the Lord’s, in order to avoid people making fun of us or to enjoy comforts and pleasures. This means that we make new experience of the sin; getting far from Jesus we find ourselves in that distance from the Father which we gave up during the baptism.

What should we do at this point? The apostle John answers us in the passage from his letter (Reading 2): “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the upright”. When we are aware that we stepped in a direction that is driving us away from God, we have to turn again to Jesus. He is always the one in the name of which repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached. We are turning to Jesus present in His Church, who has given forgiveness through the apostles, ministers of His mercy.

However, John recommends us, let us try not to commit any sin. We will not commit sins if we keep His commandments, if we keep His word. It will not be enough to say: “Now that I am baptized I am all Christ Jesus’ ”; it is necessary to live His word, otherwise this sentence will turn out to be a lie!

 

I seek your Word, Lord Jesus, in order to live it, in order for my life to be a work of Yours, shaped by You, through Your Spirit You gave to me! I too will be a witness of Your resurrection! Thank You, Lord Jesus!