Saturday within the Easter Octave: 7th April, 2018
Acts 4: 13-21; Mk 16: 9-15
Jesus returned, but they recognised him not! He was a bit annoyed as during his time with them. He takes the liberty to rebuke them, because he knew they loved him. It was for the same reason he did not reject them, but only rebuked them and their slowness to believe, in spite of the repeated signs and wonders. That rightful rebuke reassured the disciples much and they came to a resolve, no one or nothing could affect from then. No threats, no powers, no imprisonments, no lashes, no authority could stop them from proclaiming Christ because they were so powerfully taken up by that encounter with the Risen Christ. They knew he was with them every moment, as he had promised them!
Every day, the Risen Lord returns to us with a fresh proposal to live with us unceasingly; Our obstinacy to hold on to various concerns in life, our blindness to the extraordinary love with which the Risen Lord approaches us, our failure to see through and observe in the events of life, the Lord who walks with us - these deserve a rebuke from the Lord. We live at times like obstinate little children, refusing to see the whole reality; we see only what we want to and we fail to see what we really need to. And from the little that we see, we interpret things and stay put there... thinking that we have figured it all out and we are on the right! The Lord would scream at us, "why don't you open you eyes and see, for your own sakes!"
Let us move on... let us allow the Lord to show us the Lord's real presence with us. It would not matter, until we reach the resolve as did the apostles, to proclaim in our words and deeds, the Lord who has won us over. We are called to be witnesses, beginning from wherever we are to the ends of the world. Are we ready? Are we ready to move on from our obstinacy to a resolve to surrender?
